Perched on a rocky ridge overlooking the Val Brembilla, the Romanesque church of Santa Maria in Montanis has watched over the surrounding valleys for nearly a millennium. Once a place of worship for travelers crossing the ancient mountain paths that linked nearby villages, it is now a deconsecrated sanctuary, stripped of its religious function yet still charged with spiritual resonance. Its stone walls, timeworn frescoes, and simple architecture bear witness to centuries of human passage and devotion.

Under this gentle light, Bianca Bondi transforms the site into a space of renewal, a dialogue between history, nature, and the traces of collective memory.
Graces for Gerosa is an installation created specifically for this setting: seven life-sized sculptures, cast from the bodies of local volunteers, form a silent choir between earth and spirit. Their plaster, akin to the church’s own stone, captures the memory of a presence, a breath, a gesture.

The faceless figures, crowned with bouquets of flowers, coral, and crystallized organic materials, become vessels of energy and transformation. Bondi draws inspiration from the mythological motif of the Three Graces, symbols of harmony, generosity, and beauty, and from the recurring figure of the dancing maiden in Western iconography, often seen as an echo of antiquity’s survival into modern times. Through this lens, the artist reinterprets the idea of grace not as an abstract ideal, but as something profoundly human and collective, embodied by the people of Gerosa themselves.

Santa Maria in Montanis, Gerosa (Val Brembilla)
October 4, 2025 – January 18, 2026
Photo: Nicola Gnesi @nicola.gnesi_studio

@gamec_bergamo @bondi_bianca