Breaking THROUGH

n Cité Internationale des Arts’ austere and derelict modernist building in Paris, which sits beside the perfectly squared French garden of the Hôtel de Sens, Bianca Bondi set up vases and amphora-like vessels in a small sink in the corner of a wet room. It was a few hours before the opening of her 2016 exhibition, , and the artist was making her objects live through a painful experience: oxidation. Upon making contact with salt and water, the copper of the objects became enhanced by a sheen of sparkling grey that are sometimes seen on the’s underwater cave, where the Disney princess piled up her treasures: candleholders, antique vases, treasure trunks, and a simple fork with an unidentified function. Years later, objects still have their own lives for the artist, and are loaded with a kind of surviving dimension outside of human interpretations.