The Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy is excited to announce the completion of the large-
scale groundwork Gateway to Infinity (An Anti-monument) by Boston-based queer, interdisciplinary
artist Maria Molteni. Stretching 45 feet in diameter, Gateway to Infinity explores site-specific histories
and collective rebirth through a design created during 10 months of extensive research by the
artist. “I’ve often framed my previous ground paintings, particularly the basketball courts, as
‘horizontal monuments’, ‘altars to the sky’, and ‘shape-shifting labyrinths.’ But Gateway to Infinity is
my first ‘anti-monument’ and formal labyrinth,†said Molteni. “As traditional monuments march upward
into space, marking territory and freezing trauma in stone, an anti-monument pulls energy toward
itself, receives, transforms, and composts it. My anti-monument is a tornado, a cave, a shadow,
cauldron, and crucible in motion.â€Located next to the Greenway Carousel between Christopher
Columbus Park and Faneuil Hall, the mural invites audiences to reflect upon and contend with these
sites’ legacies, consider non-dominant narratives of place and public memory, and find personal
connections with their own histories. By centering moving, living bodies upon a communal platform,
rather than atop towering pedestals, Gateway to Infinity creates a colorful, multifaceted labyrinth and
space for processing, releasing, and healing.“Gateway to Infinity provides a critical entry to the
current conversation on public monuments and public history in the City of Boston,“ said Dr. Audrey
Lopez, Director and Curator of Public Art for the Greenway Conservancy. “Molteni’s complex yet
accessible design invites audiences to engage physically with the artwork, while reflecting upon
relationships with place, belonging, and power in ways that allow us to carefully –and collectively–
tend to the past while opening new visions and possibilities of being in the present.†As with many of
Molteni’s vibrant, massive groundworks, Gateway to Infinity features abstract symbols anchored in
the land, sea, body, and celestial beings. Centered around a vibrant triple spiral motif –a three-limbed
symbol known as a “triskeles/triskelionâ€â€“ the groundwork may be viewed from an infinite range of
angles and orientations, instead of a single, definitive perspective or starting point. Artists Laura
Ganci, Nicole Hogarty, Diya Ghosh, and Ali Reid assisted on the project. On June 22, a public ritual
was held in celebration of the Summer Solstice, during which the artist along with three performers
(Laura Campagna, Vin Caponigro, Laura Ganci) walked the spiraling labyrinth and made a cyclical
journey to restore connections of the mind and body, land and sea, past and future. Guests were
invited to participate via printed paper talismans, a collective movement ritual, and personal family
heirlooms (both physical and conceptualized). The public ritual, entitled Triskele & The Monster’s
Tools: A Solstice Invocation of Medusa Consciousness, drew 60 participants and will live on via a
collaborative publication, a video, and guided meditation. All materials will be accessible by
smartphone, so that visitors to the multilayered labyrinth may find space for processing, release, and
regeneration throughout the work’s presence on The Greenway.A project zine will be available in the
next month, containing contextual essays by Molteni, Campagna and Caponigro, designed by
Caponigro and printed by Snake Hair. They will be physically available as takeaways at the site of
the mural in the coming months; the pdf of the zine draft is now available on Molteni’s website.The
Greenway Public Art Program is exclusively funded through grants and private sources, including the
generous support of The Barr Foundation, Goulston & Storrs, Mass Cultural Council, and Yotel.
Photo requests may be forwarded to [email protected].