Hello & welcome to my portfolio

Bianca Boragi finds her way through a pretty wide range of mediums, from sculpture, film or dance to installation, drawing or photography. But whatever their specific medium might be, her works always adress a set of concerns of her own: trained both as a sculptor and a contemporary dancer, the artist developed an obsession for weight, gravity, balance, movement and the body.

Early pieces such as Castaways or British Scalp Proclamation 1637 were created for outdoor exhibitions in specific locations. Both use plants and earth as sculpture materials, in the tradition of land art. In the first piece, stiffness becomes movement as the artist makes her way through the tall grass, transfiguring weeds in a vegetal ocean. In the latter, clods of earth are dug out and hung on trees and instil their threatening presence in the small woods of a national park.

The three series of short videos made in 2009 seem to deal more specifically with the interactions of sculpture, dance and film. Here the idea of sculpture in movement is key and the work of people such as Bruce Nauman, Bas Jan Ader, Roman Signer or Pina Bausch are definite influences. But one could also point out here the humoristic and oniric quality of the work, which can evoke the films of Federico Fellini, Werner Herzog or Maya Deren. Most of the time, editing is kept to a minimum and most of the short videos in each series are made of a single shot. The attention is rather turned to the characters and what they do. Most of the situations are pretty surrealistic, if not absurd or burlesque. The characters seem to be rather disoriented, not to stay seriously disturbed. But in the same time most of them are touching in that they always seem to try to do something about their condition. Here one can definitely think of Albert Camus's Sisyphe and how pushing that big rock to reach the mountain top is a necessity even when it can only fail. In the second series of videos, the connection to experimental dance is made clear, the artist playing on the repetition of several gestures in the first and the last videos of the series.

It might be important to mention how some of the sculpture or photographic work influences or interferes with the video work. The videos thus seem to be only parts of larger projects and are linked with other works. For instance, the sculpture entitled Sein gant is "activated" in the first series of video, when the woman character of the film throws the 40 meter sleeves of the bra (the sculpture) through the window of her building. This is what is meant by sculpture in movement. The grace and elegance of the movement gives the sculpture a new life and the context gives it a whole new meaning. Another example would be the series of photographs made in Essen, Germany which seem to be preparatory studies for the third series of videos.

The most recent work has been more pictorial, being mostly photographs and drawings made in Los Angeles during a short residency at Calarts. The series of photographs entitled On TV has been created by taking long exposure time pictures of a TV screen. A reflexion on movement and time, the results evoke paintings by Futurists such as Giacomo Balla or the early photographs of Jules Etienne Marey but with a more contemporary edge, and James Rosenquist-esque colors.

As for the Utah distances drawings, they are the result of a process that's pretty similar, but hand made. Basically, the artist attempts to draw everything that appears in front of her eyes during a specific period of time. This specific series was created while travelling through Los Angeles and the West Coast and each drawing corresponds to one trip (hence the map in the background).


Bianca Boragi was born in Paris, France. She lives and works in Brooklyn, USA.




Website & text : Kevin Tong