Maria Molteni "Counting to Infinity: Sweeping Stars"
“Counting to Infinity was incubated on this year’s Pisces New Moon, when I corralled every stone I’ve collected over many years of walks and wanderings across the globe. I pulled them out of corners of my apartment/studio and soaked them in the bath, and sounds of the moon and planets, beneath a brand new Rosary I made for myself and an ancestral sword I was recently gifted.
I’m grateful to say that I was able to expand this work further, into an installation that recently opened in Venice, Italy. Figure, Character, Sign- curated by the amazing artist/curators Dana Clancy and Mary Y. Yang- occupies 3 rooms of A Plus A Gallery. Immersive installations by myself, Radical Return, and Adrienne Elise Tarver will inhabit each.
I grew up as a ferocious card-shark of a child- playing games for hours with friends. While my grandparents usually played on a traditional card table, I enjoyed playing on the floor.
As an adult, my favorite card game is a traditional Italian game called Scopa, which I’ve played most nights of this year with my partner. We have an elaborate score book where I also record Tarot pulls from a traditional Milanese deck (my family ancestry traces back to Milan). If you want to learn more about the magical way that regional Italian Scopa/playing cards found their way into my life, you can read about my adventures in the Adriatic Sea on Patreon.
But for now…. In Italian, the word “Scopa” translates to “broom”, “to sweep” (or even “to fuck” ). The aim of the game is to “sweep” the cards off of the playing surface (aka the floor). I couldn’t resist the word-play triangulation between three languages for my project in Italy and alongside Chinese-American artists @radicalcharacters.
As I was developing the designs for my own original Scopa deck- inspired by the hands-on practice of Rosary prayer and it’s connection to the cosmos- I was doing a lot of research on the asteroids and comets that I included in the deck. From an old book that I inherited from my late neighbor Paul Laffoley I found that ancient Chinese astrologers/ astronomers used a character for comet that translates to English as “Broom Stars” or “Sweeping Stars” - since comets kind of look like a broom and are made from frozen space dust.
A guide to the suit symbology which are all structures hand- made from stone:
Wells / Water / Blue
Obelisks / Air / Green
Pyramids / Fire / Yellow
Gravestones / Earth / Red
Labyrinths / Spirit/Ether / Violet
Asteroids / Triumphs
In my installation, a spirit team of 5 sweepers stand at the ready to drop down from the heavens and clear the space after each game- kind of like angelic Zamboni drivers . I assembled the brooms by hand from the materials that classic Venetian street sweeping brooms are made of and assigned them each the name of a famous Italian astronomer who discovered or worked closely with a comet in their day (I think my favorite is #Schiaparelli but Donati’s Comet is very beautiful).” - Maria Molteni writes about her recent works and exhibition at the Venice Biennale.
