Details
Celestial Antiphony creates a cycle of beats on the fingers and illustrates a childhood shortcut for praying the Rosary when beads have gone missing. The artist has returned to the modular, rhythmic orb-based practice of prayer, which transcends boundaries of faith and constructs of time. Molteni has created drawings of their hands, positioned to hold each of 50 stones they collected over many years and walks around the world. The hands are depicted in cradled positions that accommodate each stone’s weight and contour. Five decades of colored fingers count the 50 “Hail Mary” prayers that complete a Rosary loop. This exhibition will include a number of references to her mural in San Luis Obispo, Seven Sisters (Celestial Subduction).
About the Artist
Maria Molteni (They/She, b. 1983, Nashville) is a queer transdisciplinary artist, educator, organizer, and mystic. They received a largely formalist art education, studying oil painting, printmaking, and dance at Boston University. Molteni’s work features a systematic, intentional, and site-specific approach requiring a laborious process of paint mixing and complex design systems often rooted in cosmic quilting motifs (such as “the friendship star” and “seven sisters” patterns present in her 2021 mural on Higuera Street in downtown SLO). They engage in extensive research to gather imagery from academic, folkloric, and mystical/spiritual sources.
This exhibition is generously presented by
