Jakob’s Ladder ( סֻלָּם יַעֲקֹב ) & Telescope Campi Flegrei ( φλέγω), 2026, installation, cedar wood, ribbon, cotton, seawater, ink. The installation is to consist of the two paintings installed, ideally in the same room.
Jakob’s Ladder ( סֻלָּם יַעֲקֹב ), painting with ink and seawater appearing in the colors opposing side of where the sun descends the horizon. An oversized Jakob’s Ladder toy constructed of olive wood and fabric, and hung in the space, casting a shadow in the shape of analogue film frames onto the painting.
Telescope Campi Flegrei ( φλέγω), 2026, painting with ink and seawater appearing in the most commonly appearing colors in sunset over Campi Flegrei.This painting is mounted and framed similar to that of an enlarged microscope lens, creating a circular viewing field of the painting.
The resulting pigments painted in seawater and ink on textile reimagine Mediterranean sunset colors over the Gulf of Naples and Gulf of Pozzuoli, where the paintings were created. The themes in the work are the plays of myth making, hierarchy and framing actions, perpetual changes in landscape, to give meaning and context to the perpetuity of change, eventual reformations of lives and landscapes, and the way the nature is imagined and yet not as it appears.
The potential of an eruption of the Campi Flegrei super volcano is something the people of Napoli and Pozzouli appear at peace with and has a large play in their daily lives. The work as an installation looks at ideological allegory with a secular perspective, taking up the subjects of geological empathy and sublime rheology, or the geological and cultural-social behavioral work towards understanding the magnetic and resonances forming landscapes upon which we live with life on earth.
The work developed from Bridge of Jakob, 2010 and Dreamtime Landscape, 2024.
Contact Mari for exhibitions and collection information: mariammanart@icloud.com
View the video of the making of the first two on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/p/DZM9EaiIz2z/
The following images are from the work in progress:
