Bianca Baldi
This residency is supported by Wallonie-Bruxelles International.
Bianca Baldi was born in 1985 in Johannesburg (ZA), she lives and works in Brussels (BE).
Her work draws on historical narratives to reveal the complex networks of political, economic, and cultural influence. Through photographs, films, writings, publications, and installations, she explores hidden power structures and the storytelling mechanisms that fabricate oppression.
Bianca Baldi studied art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town (ZA) and the Staedelschule in Frankfurt am Main (GE). She has participated in various international exhibitions, including the 11th Rencontres de Bamako (ML), the African Photography Biennale (2017), the 11th Shanghai Biennale at the Power Station of Art, Shanghai, CN (2016), the 8th Berlin Biennale at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, DE (2014), and the 19th Contemporary Art Festival SESC Videobrasil, São Paulo, BR (2015). Her work has also been shown in group exhibitions at Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp (2016), Kunstverein Braunschweig, and Kunstverein Frankfurt (2015). Recent solo exhibitions include Eyes in the Back of Your Head at Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, Hamburg, DE (2017), Pure Breaths at Swimming Pool Projects, Sofia (BG) in 2016, and Zero Latitude at the Goethe Institut Johannesburg (ZA) in 2014.
During the Residency:
“Adopt the humor of the cunning octopus that seems to imitate the rock to which it clings. Now, keep going in that direction, now, take on a different expression.”
— Theognidean Sylloge, 213 - 218, excerpt 215-217
Bianca Baldi explores the concept of Versipellis—a phenomenon she interprets both as an adaptive ability to change skin color and as a quality inherent in photographic film itself. She connects this phenomenon to the cultural practice of passing—the act of assuming a different racial identity to evade the discriminatory boundaries imposed by dominant racial classifications.
This research was the subject of a lecture-performance in dialogue with Jana J. Haeckel, curator and researcher affiliated with the Goethe Institut in Brussels. This event took place as part of the public program Les émotions trafiquées – Lust for Dust, organized in conjunction with the exhibition Vos désirs sont les nôtres, produced by Triangle France – Astérides.
