ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Gateway to Infinity (An Anti-monument) is a large-scale painted ground work by Boston-based interdisciplinary artist Maria Molteni exploring site-specific histories and collective rebirth. The piece features a turning tri-limbed motif referencing symbols such as the Trinacria, Triskeles, and Triskelion that organize around a triple spiral. Varying iterations of the Holy Trinity, which the artist considers a “Gateway to Infinity,” reflect ancient, dynamic structures that expand dualist binaries. Located on Massachusett and Pawtucket land, between so-called “Christopher Columbus Park” and “Faneuil Hall,” this artwork seeks to call upon the receptive properties of an Anti-monument, positioned to pull energy toward the earth for composting. The work invites audiences to reflect upon and contend with the sites’ violent legacies and the choices made to freeze and commemorate them via conventional stone monuments. Molteni’s energetic installation aims to alchemize petrified trauma by centering moving, living bodies upon a communal platform, rather than atop towering pedestals.  

Artists assisting on the artwork are Ali Reid, Nicole Hogarty and Laura Ganci (who will also perform with us on the Solstice as a Gorgon!

Triskele & The Monster’s Tools: A Solstice Invocation of Medusa Consciousness

On the Summer Solstice, Molteni and non-binary Italian American collaborators Vin Caponigro, Laura Campagna, Ash Capachione welcome you to this public ritual upon the newly finished painted artwork, a spiraling labyrinth representing non-dual, cyclical expansion. Three Gorgons (Molteni, Caponigro, and Ganci), united by a lunar Priestess (Campagna), journey to the center, an Anti-monument, to invoke the spirit of Medusa Consciousness and the emerging awareness that recent reflections on her myth have reawakened. 

Guests are invited to participate via printed paper talismans, a collective movement ritual, and personal family heirlooms (physical or conceptualized). Together we call upon the beaming sun, salty ocean, and three conjunction planetary bodies – the Moon, Venus, and Mars – to aid in a regenerative alchemical process. On this longest day, our inherited artifacts transform via frameworks of “The Master’s Tools” (an influential concept of Audre Lorde) into the “Monster’s Tools” (offered by thinkers such as Ece Canli). By the fire of the Summer Solstice, we forge new tools and paths for the future from the melted refuse of the Masters’ instrumentation. Centering reclaimed narratives of Monsterized, Othered beings, we wish to restore connections of the mind and heart, land and sea. Our aim is to welcome a fully embodied Medusa into the space left vacant by the heartless, beheaded Boston Columbus. 

The performance will live on via collaborative video, publication, and guided meditation (accessible by this QR code), so visitors to the multilayered labyrinth may find space for processing, release and regeneration.

* Aerial Photography by Chris Rucinski

As described in the project statements, artifacts and heirlooms play a role in the artwork’s imagery and Summer Solstice activation. Such inherited objects are small, yet equally monumental tools for memorialization and magic. During our gathering on June 21, they’ll serve as anchors for personal and collective memory and responsibility, reflecting narrative patterns passed on through culture and family. Read below for context + directions to submit your own objects for incorporation into the visual motif of the painted work and/or printed takeaways.

Molteni’s expanded project statement (which will appear as an essay in a collaborative zine with ritual co-hosts Caponigro and Campagna) recounts the story of a strange family heirloom. A brief excerpt from the section titled A Double-Edged Visitor: 

The same year Boston’s own Christopher Columbus statue was beheaded, I inherited a strange family heirloom- my Great Grandfather’s Knights of Columbus sword. While it’s more of a ceremonial tool than a weapon, it holds a violent energy by association. I’ve spent many moon cycles contemplating and clearing it. With my handmade Rosary hovering above, I’ve invited the Divine Mother, the Madonna, Avem Maris to keep an eye on what feels like an energetic paradox. I have plans to replace the ornamental head of Columbus, capping the sword’s handle with a Rose. 

The sudden appearance of this heirloom, which is my only connection to my patrilineal Grand and Great-Grandfathers, brings to mind the Ace of Swords card of the Tarot. This card may represent an awakening, new idea, or fresh perspective. The Page of Swords, another resonant Tarot card, often depicts an androgynous young character holding their sword, as if a stalk of fresh fennel, not yet sure how to harness its power. As a youthful, queer spirit myself, I accept my family’s Ace of a sword with uneasy hesitation, but also brave hope that I may reshape, reclaim or recondition it. It’s my new-found Frankenstein to operate on and breathe new life into. 

As the essay continues, it calls upon a number of frameworks for reflection on such inherited tools and patterns. They include: 

Sonya Renee Taylor’s New Tools for New Awarenesses, by which she insists that the “same old tools” of violence, carcerality and aggression need to be replaced with new tools for the future. They are needed to support the new states of awareness rapidly gained through Black Lives Matter and Covid Era cultural shifts.

Audre Lorde’s The Master’s Tools, from her greatly influential essay “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House”.

Ece Canli’s Monster’s Tools, from her lecture Monsterizing the Master’s Tools, which centers the agency of individuals and groups who have been Othered or targeted by dominant hegemonic systems. 

As a queer (aka Queerdo) artist who has incorporated Monsters, particularly Sirens, Melusine and other Sea Serpents into years of my work, I take particular interest in how queer community, and my fellow queer artists embrace Monster Theory and lore to express pride, power and alienation. When I consider the Monster and their tools, I think of hybrid systems that pull together primal and futuristic desires. Just as the labyrinthine triple spiral moves clockwise and counterclockwise, we must look backwards and forwards to reinvent tools for new awarenesses. By the Solstice’s fiery rays, we will melt down the tools of our ancestors and reshape them for future states of heart-centered action.