GROUP EXHIBITION

Bondy (2017)—a mesmerizing video portrait of a contemporary globalized community—is the show’s centerpiece. In 2017, the commune of Bondy, a Paris suburb, and Centre National de la Danse invited (LA)HORDE to produce a choreographic portrait of Bondy and its residents. The aim was to venture into the community and meet ordinary citizens who dance but may not have any formal training.

(LA)HORDE invited these individuals—representing a wide demography of age, gender, and cultural background—to film themselves dancing, and directing themselves as they danced, in venues of their choice.

Some fifty community members volunteered to participate in the project, including high-school cheerleaders, seniors in a dance club, and even synchronized swimmers. In the video, participants are shown dancing or performing routines in their respective zones of community activity. Additionally, members of local motorcycle clubs in full biker regalia mimic the movements of their mounted rides in staged pantomimes. Equal parts graceful and menacing, these poetic interludes offer an enthralling subtext to the otherwise straightforward choreographed vignettes. The exhibition’s title is a nod to Bondy’s eighteenth-century municipal motto Heureux sous son ombre, or “Happy under its shadow.” Referring to the township’s origins near the forest of the same name, the motto was adopted to rehabilitate the image of a region once plagued by highwaymen and banditry.

(LA)HORDE’s sculpture HEUREUX SOUS SON OMBRE (2024), presented alongside the video, similarly acknowledges culturally demarcated spaces of threat and civilization, with ideas about society that consistently emerge in politically constructed forms. Nearby, its conceptual cousin, the sculpture Ghost Light, The Bass, Miami (2024), echoes this call to alleviate collective anxiety, alluding to the theater tradition of placing a utility light onstage after hours to ensure the safety of personnel in a darkened theater (or, superstitiously, to keep the ghosts’ company).

Bondy was produced by the commune of Bondy and Centre National de la Danse, in the commune of Pantin, with financial support by Département de la Seine-Saint-Denis under the cultural and patrimonial cooperation agreement.

HEUREUX SOUS SON OMBRE and Ghost Light, The Bass, Miami are commissioned and produced by The Bass, Miami Beach.

(LA)HORDE: Heureux sous son ombre is organized by James Voorhies, The Bass Chief Curator, and Claudia Mattos, Associate Curator of New Media Art.