Bianca Bondi “Earth, Coral, Clouds” at Palazzo Chigi Zondadari, Siena

”Earth isn’t just a blank sheet for the projection of human desire: the desire loop is predicated on entities (Earth, coral, clouds) that also exist in a loop form in relation to one another and in relation to humans.”
—Timothy Morton, Dark Ecology

Bianca Bondi transforms the halls and courtyard of the 18th-century Palazzo Chigi Zondadari in Siena into a dynamic intertwining of organic and inorganic forms in constant flux. The exhibition title, inspired by Dark Ecology by Timothy Morton, invites reflection on the cyclicity of the natural world and the uncomfortable truths of our ecological existence. Following this philosophy, Bondi creates site- specific interventions that explore themes of transformation, memory, and time through processes of crystallization, oxidation, and chemical change.

In the courtyard, Procession for the lost and found (2025) emerges as a floating ritual: a suspended composition of flowers and burned crucifixes evokes gestures of devotion and memory, symbolizing an offering to the invisible. The delicate, precarious forms recall the fragile balance between destruction and rebirth, between presence and absence.

In the ballroom, The Nymphaeum (2025) is presented as a large turquoise saltwater basin that reflects and distorts light. Recalling both a ritual cup and an ancient nymphaeum, the installation channels the ancestral relationship between water, ritual, and transformation.

Further along, in the dining room, What grows after us (2025) unfolds under a ceiling decorated with starry skies: a banquet table overwhelmed by time, where lace and minerals merge into a relic suspended between past and future. On the walls, two works from the Lorelei series (2024) sublimate the idea of a saline aquatic environment, recreating floating surfaces through photographic manipulations of copper amphorae immersed in water. Translated into textile patterns and enriched with symbolic flowers like amaranth, jasmine, and hydrangea, the two tapestries evoke a suspended dimension, a space where time seems to expand.

Throughout the rooms of the palace, the display cases from the Bloom series (2025) act as portals to dormant life universes. Inspired by the life of the Megabalanus tintinnabulum crustacean, they reflect on the concept of stasis and the sedimentation of memory. Organic materials cover objects from past eras, which, through crystallization processes, assume new forms in continuous evolution. Finally, in the gallery, Cabinets (2024–2025) are containers of crystallized nature fragments: shells, salts, and moss that transform these cabinets into relics suspended between care and dissolution.

“For the exhibition Earth, Coral, Clouds,” explain curators Fiammetta Griccioli and Cloé Perrone, “Bianca Bondi, through her works, infiltrates the spaces of Palazzo Chigi Zondadari, entering into a symbiotic dialogue with the allegorical iconography of the ceilings and walls of the 18th-century palace. Nature is at the core of the artist’s practice; using materials like sand, salt, moss, and flowers, she brings to life installations capable of transforming over time, challenging the immutability of the surrounding space. Bondi’s work stands out for its radical approach to materials, which mutate through ancient alchemical processes, creating works where ancestral knowledge and new rituals converge. The artist reflects on the cyclicity of human existence and the urgencies of the present: from the loss of collective meaning to the fragile relationship with our ecosystem.”

As visitors move through the exhibition, they are invited to lose themselves in a circular path between blossoms and relics, a suspended ouroboros that reveals the magic of the artist’s passage, highlighting the symbiotic nature of her work.

at Palazzo Chigi Zondadari, Siena
until December 8, 2025