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Oil does not simply fuel cars, industries and cities: for more than a century, it has shaped landscapes, economies, power relations and even our imagination. Soleil Noir, at Villa Medici, takes this dark substance as a starting point to explore the civilisation we have built by burning it. After stone and water, the exhibition cycle devoted to the elements now turns to the fuel that has come to symbolise modernity. Refineries, pipelines and offshore platforms become visible traces of a history marked by colonialism and resource exploitation, revolutions, coups, energy crises and environmental disasters. The works also reveal what often remains hidden: the infrastructures and economic systems that make our everyday lives possible. From Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt and Robert Rauschenberg to Monira Al Qadiri, Zina Saro-Wiwa and Ana Alenso, artists from different generations transform oil from a simple raw material into a lens through which to observe the present. Art and ecological thought converge around the same question: how can we imagine a world after oil? Soleil noir offers no simple answer, but reveals just how deeply black gold has entered our lives - and how difficult it is to imagine the future without it.