Notes on Weathering

Notes on Weathering marks the start of FORA, a special programme of exhibitions and events celebrating Casino Luxembourg’s thirtieth anniversary. The work in progress conceived by Bianca Bondi (born in 1986 in Johannesburg, South Africa, lives and works in Paris) for the basement of the building will unfold over a whole year, following its subterranean, continuous, and silent temporality. These underground premises, which are normally not accessible to the public, are characterized by humidity, darkness and minerality. As an active milieu exposed to the vagaries of time, they are in thrall to processes of degradation, deposits, corrosion, and transformation. 

The term “weathering” refers to the discrete yet irreversible processes through which materials are transformed over time. In Bondi’s installation these phenomena are neither represented nor staged but rather welcomed as forces at work capable of gradually modifying matter, form, and the relationships between elements. The word “notes”, in turn, suggests a documentary, fragmentary and open-ended approach. Accordingly, Bondi’s project operates as a succession of observations, traces, and transitional states distributed across space and time. Each activation initiates processes that unravel over time, independently of Bondi’s presence, and spread beyond the initially occupied space. Propagation thus becomes the project’s modus operandi—a way for the spaces to influence each other, keep the traces of previous activations, and enter into a deferred dialogue with each other. 

The practice of Bianca Bondi  resonates deeply with this kind of environment, as her works rely on materials that are sensitive to their surroundings. Activated by phenomena of reaction, alteration and propagation, Bondi’s works develop as open systems subject to the influences of their surroundings and to an extended temporality that escapes the logics of control, conservation, and immediate visibility.