Bianca Bondi: Notes on Weathering

Notes on Weathering is a work in progress conceived by Bianca Bondi (born in 1986 in Johannesburg, South Africa, lives and works in Paris) for the basement of Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain, unfolding over the whole year 2026, following its subterranean, continuous, and silent temporality. These underground premises, 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.

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 and spread beyond the initially occupied space. Propagation thus becomes the project’s modus operandi—a way for the spaces to influence one another, preserve traces of previous activations, and enter into a deferred dialogue. 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. 

The term “weathering” refers to the discrete yet irreversible processes through which materials are transformed over time. These phenomena are neither represented nor staged but rather welcomed as forces at work that can gradually modify matter, form, and the relationships between them. The word “notes”, in turn, suggests a documentary, fragmentary, and open-ended approach.

Throughout distinct moments in the year, this unique project is punctuated by activations that gradually reveal new forms and unexpected relationships with the building's architecture. As it spreads through the cellar's spaces and atmospheres, the public is invited to follow its evolution and experience its subtle variations.

What emerges is a material language shaped through contact, saturation, and the slow accumulation of residue, opening a field of interpretation in which the invisible does not manifest as an apparition but as a continuous change in conditions.

Curators: Kevin Muhlen & Stilbé Schroeder