Maria Molteni: Heart of Stone, April 4th - April 27th
PRACTICE Gallery is pleased to present the work of Massachusetts based Artist Maria Molteni.
First Friday Opening Reception, Friday, April 4th, 6-9 pm
On view through Sunday April 27th, 2025
2-6 PM - Saturday and Sunday
HEART OF STONE
Heart of Stone builds upon an ongoing project called Counting to Infinity (Contando all’Infinito) and a body of work called Beautiful Seven (Settebello). Both gather around a set of fifty found stones and hand drawings which cradle their forms. Colored fingers reflect Molteni’s childhood habit of counting Hail Marys on their hands, like decades of Rosary prayer beads. Sibilline Books of Cumae speak of Cibele, a large black meteorite stolen from Phrygia by Romans when they learned of the great mountain mother’s rock form. Biblical excerpts coax the human heart away from the earth and toward a purified “flesh”. Meanwhile, the animistic world, by which shells, lagoons, mountains, comets and stars are alive and pulsing, observes the heart of stone. When counting beads and beats, bodies reunite with the rhythms of heaven and earth. Through this lens Molteni exercises what they call Celestial Antiphony, a call-and-response relationship with the divine.
This work began serendipitously on the Great Solar Eclipse of 2017, when Molteni found their first Italian playing card on the floor of the Adriatic Sea. The work connects Molteni’s original deck of playing + divination cards and the popular Italian card game Scopa (meaning “broom”) to their avid interest in the Pleiades star cluster, global Seven Sisters mythologies, and a solo pilgrimage to seven Marian miracle sites sacred to the mountainous region of Campania.
The term Settebello literally means “beautiful seven”, naming the luckiest card in the game of Scopa. Stelle Scopa adapts language used by ancient astronomers to describe comets as “broom stars” or “sweeping stars”. The imagery in Molteni’s deck incorporates their hand drawings, Italian stone iconography, and the fifty “beads” from a terrestrial Rosary. Stelle Scopa departs slightly from tradition to include five suits, with the planets Mercury, Mars and Venus in place of typical Court cards. A set of eleven asteroids serve as the deck’s “Major Arcana”. Sixty-one total cards equals the full number of beads on a traditional Rosary. Shuffling, cutting, and handling the deck evokes sacred stone collecting as bead and body-based prayer. Card table altar arrangements, hand rolled rose beads, video performance set to sounds of the Moon and Venus, seven portal-like grottos, cast hands modeled after Madonna statuary, and handcrafted brooms further explore themes of queerness and cosmic cycles.
This exhibition is generously supported by a grant from the Artist’s Resource Trust
ARTIST BIO
Maria Molteni (They/Them, b 1983, Nashville) is a queer interdisciplinary artist, designer, educator and mystic. They descend from Tennessee (Cherokee, Shawnee, Yuchi lands) square dancers, stunt motorcyclists, quilters, beekeepers and opera singers of various, still unfolding, European backgrounds. Their practice has grown from formal studies in Painting, Printmaking and Dance to incorporate research, ritual and play-based collaboration. Their intuitive practice spans movement-based alchemy, astrology, tarot, dreamwork and color magic
Molteni exists at the intersection of embodied mysticism and tactile problem solving, giving shape to the unseen. From fiber to found-object sculpture, textile to video, performance to publication, they choose media that combine conceptual rigor, formal satisfaction and spiritual depth. Invested in many areas of study, they seek to interrupt binary thinking, crossing otherwise siloed worlds. They playfully position their practice as Phys Ed experiments for visionary communities like the Shakers or Black Mountain College.
Molteni’s research often utilizes publication and multiples to anchor, bolster and expand their artwork. Their experimental product lines Infinite Goddetc + Free Bleed Press offer zines, artist books, stickers, prints, apparel, original tarot + playing cards, and limited editioned art objects that embrace the margins. Infinite Goddetc centers queerness, intersectional feminism and gender expansive mysticism via a playful framework for editioned multiples called “Counting to Infinity”. Molteni’s first deck of playing/ divination cards Contando All’Infinito * Stelle Scopa are named for this process.
Molteni has exhibited at numerous galleries and museums as well as basements, meadows, sidewalks and seascapes across the globe. Some institutions include The Momentary Contemporary Art Museum (Bentonville, AK), MFA and ICA Boston (MA), Project Rowhouses (Houston, TX), Den Frei Contemporary Art Center (Copenhagen, Denmark), NGBK (Berlin), Museum of Design (Atlanta, GA), Conduit Gallery (Dallas, TX), Flower Head (LA, CA), Fuller Craft Museum (Brockton, MA), Space Gallery (Portland, ME), A Plus A Gallery (Venice, Italy), SLO Museum of Art (San Luis Obispo, CA).
