AJA BOND
recent works
If A Banner Drops In the Woods and No One’s There to Read It, Does It Make A Statement?
20′ banner made of hand-dyed salvaged silk, porcelain, dowels, cords, stakes, candles, mossy rock, water, archival inkjet print
2023
Remedies for New Deserts
Archival inkjet prints of four Soil Chromatographs [soil sample, lye solution, silver nitrate, filter paper] made from sites at the Granite Mountains Desert Research Center, dropper bottles, labels, magnets, remedy [water, brandy]
24”x24”x2”
2022
A desert spring and the beings surrounding it have information about survival in the dearth of water that could be useful to a landscape newly challenged by chronic drought. In this series, I gather imprints of the knowledge held by the Snake Spring ecosystem by creating remedies, using folk-science based on homeopathy and soil chromatographs, a pseudo-photographic soil testing method. The combined effect is a visual and energetic communication about adaptation to extreme climates which can be offered as a form of energetic bioremediation to ecosystems struggling within a warming world.
Rot House
installation
Emergency blankets, digital microscope photographs inkjet printed on silk, scraps leftover from making clothes and/or dyed with indigo, madder root, avocado pit, cochineal, rust, vinegar and used tea leaves, greenhouse structure refinished with spray paint, grow lights, air pump, glass jars and test tubes, small greenhouse containing red wiggler worms, Amanita Muscaria, Corpse Flower, Kelp Powder, Alfalfa meal, Molasses, Fish emulsion, stainless steel pump sprayer, box fan, compost, porcelain bones, handmade paving stones dyed with ultramarine pigment and finished with polished amethyst, decorated compost bucket, scavenged clear plexiglass, essential oil diffuser with “dirt” perfume oil, found lime green skull lamp, assorted buttons and stickers by Gentle Thrills, Arcane Bullshit, Nicole Lavelle, Besh ℅ IWW, the DSA Ecosocialist working group, Mary Tremonte, Twyla and ?
2022
Ancestor Work
installation
Cotton twill dyed with rust, vinegar, salt and used tea leaves, scraps leftover from making clothes, shell buttons, steel, saltwater, spray paint, plants, soil
2022
Site Scents I – Hot Hillside
Geosmin (molecule released by soil microbes after rain), cypress essential oil, rosemary essential oil, jojoba oil, glass bottle, wood, archival inkjet print on silk, emergency blanket, dimensions variable
2022
Site Scents II – Free Garden
Geosmin (molecule released by soil microbes after rain), rose essential oil, lavender essential oil, jasmine essential oil, melissa essential oil, lemon essential oil, jojoba oil, glass bottle, wood, archival inkjet print on silk, emergency blanket, dimensions variable
2022
Site Scents is a series of fragrances archiving microclimates within the bounds of a rough square mile, centering soil as the subtle, living substrate from which more pronounced and divergent flora emerge. Geosmin is the base note of the perfume oils, which foresee futures in which our memories of rapidly changing places may be supported by these microbial and botanical essences preserved in a carrier oil. Ongoing and acute drought is changing these ecosystems, and without rain to feed both the plants and the soil, these scents may in time become an ephemeral object of nostalgic longing, serving as an anchor to memory and place.
Jewels of the Rotting Goddess
Home-grown and wild-crafted mushrooms, 24k gold leaf, finely ground flower petals, rabbit skin glue, silk thread, plaster, candles, wire
8’x4′
2021
Dirt Nap
eye mask, pillow and weighted blanket filled with compost, hand-dyed salvaged silk
dimensions variable
2021
Funeral Vessels for Future Life (series)
biodegradable acetate, 22K gold leaf, rabbit skin glue, charcoal from ritual fire, unfired clay figurines, artworks on paper, red worms, fruit, mushrooms, flowers and herbs
24”x15”x15”
2021
The Decomposers
The Decomposers is both a series of digital photographs and a video in which humans and a canine enact a ritual of devouring and transforming organic matter into soil, channeling the microbial and fungal beings of the soil food web and bringing them into a mythopoetic feast.
2021
Cold Comfort (Year 0)
ash from a series of consecutive ritual hearth-fires lit nightly in Santa Cruz for the duration of the deadliest wildfire in California history, the Camp Fire in Paradise, CA, water from the first rain after a many month long drought, charcoal made from burning personal documents of a past life, acrylic medium, cotton, wool
6’x6’
2019
Compost
digital photograph
2019
Aja Bond 