Elena Damiani. Weather Bodies

Francesca Minini is pleased to announce Weather Bodies, a solo exhibition by Elena Damiani. The exhibition reflects on the multiple dimensions of the concepts of weather and weathering, examining their roles as transformative forces that surpass human perception while deeply shaping material and ecological processes. Weather is understood as both fleeting and expansive—a storm, a season, and an agent of geological and ecological change. To weather is to endure and transform, an ongoing interplay of forces that destabilizes fixed notions of matter and form.

This framework informs the works on view, in which Damiani draws attention to the interconnectivity between organic and inorganic realms. The sculptures, made from marble, travertine, copper, and bronze, resemble plant-like shapes, cellular forms, and traces of vitality embedded in mineral substrates. These compositions explore the porous boundaries between life and non-life, engaging with themes of decay, resilience, and mutual transformation. The materials, shaped over millennia by planetary processes, actively participate in this dialogue, embodying histories of change, adaptation, and reconfiguration.

Weather Bodies expands upon Damiani's ongoing exploration of materiality and temporality, positioning weather as a condition of co-constitution between bodies and environments. The exhibition represents a continuation of the artist's interest in geological and ecological processes, employing sculptural forms to propose a shared and evolving understanding of a world in flux and of the interdependence of all things. By collapsing the distinctions between the human and the geological, the temporal and the timeless, Damiani proposes a reconsideration of the dynamic processes that shape our world and ourselves.

The exhibition will be the third part of a project that began in 2020 and whose first part titled ENSAYOS DE LO SOLIDO was presented at the MAC Museum of Contemporary Art Lima in June 2022, and a second part titled MINERAL WAYS at Galerie Nordenhake Stockholm in November 2022.

Elena Damiani (1979 Lima, Perù) has participated in multiple international biennales, including the Seoul Mediacity Biennale (2023), Cuenca Biennial (2018, 2016), Gwangju Biennale (2016), Venice Biennale, Vienna Biennale and IV Poly/Graphic Triennial (all 2015), Bienal de la Imagen y Movimiento (2014), Mercosul Biennial (2013).
Solo exhibitions include MAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Lima (2022), Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA (2017), Museo Amparo, Puebla (2016), MUAC Museo Universitario Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City (2015). Her workhas been exhibited at the MoMA The Museum of Modern Art, Heide MoMA, Melbourne and MACO Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca (all in 2023), C3A, Cordoba and Museo de Arte Zapopan, Guadalajara (both 2022), Harn Museum of Art, Florida and A4 Art Museum, Chengdu (both 2021), DhakaArt Summit, DePaul Art Museum, Chicago and MOCO Montpellier Contemporain (all in 2020), Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon and Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Roma (both 2019), Skissernas Museum, Lund, (2017), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, and MOCAD Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (both 2015). She was awarded the Grants & Commissions Program, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation CIFO (2016) and the commission for the David Rockefeller Atrium, Americas Society, New York (2014).... read the rest of the article»