LESLEY KERMAN'S MAESTA: RECONSTRUCTING DUCCIO

Reconstructing Duccio is presented at Sketch through a newly formed partnership with University of Exeter’s new MA in Curation. This work, and many multiples, are available to buy exclusively on OpenSea. All profits made on the sale of the minted work will be donated to UNICEF to aid the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

Inhabiting Sketch’s sacred art fuelled space amid this Easter period stands Lesley Kerman’s reconstruction of Duccio’s iconic Maesta altarpiece, originally commissioned by the city of Siena in 1308. Though today it is remediated and reinserted as an artwork located in the crypto-verse and offered as a non-fungible token. Cross contaminating visual oeuvres, this large-scale altarpiece virtually follows the cycle that unravels the scenes from Christ’s crucifixion.

Kerman revisits the work of Duccio’s altarpiece with a focus on the back of the Maesta, which unravels Christ’s crucifixion through a sequence of intricate panels. She plays on the key formative elements of Duccio’s style with a refreshed lighter pallet that brings the biblical account a contemporary feel.

Materialising in the form of an NFT, this work aims to address our established predilections regarding the Western canon through decentralized mediums, locations, and a disrupted understanding of value. It subverts the archetypal gaze on traditional allegories by thrusting deeply religious themes into the contemporary spectrum. Considering our approach to old master’s artwork, especially compositions loaded with religious significance, there is an informed gaze and subconscious tendency to navigate with caution. What’s more is we rely on the ancient narratives to define the work and leave it unchanged for centuries. Hence the comparative juxtaposition to how we might approach an NFT artwork becomes even more potent. As a result of marrying these two temporalities and learnt responses, we are left considering where we locate and what we consider icons of worship. Equally, what is engrained in our lineage and canonical understanding of such narrative. Decentralizing the work both in the secular space of Sketch and further as an NFT provokes a palpable binary between ancient and contemporary discourses, whilst equally disrupting any assumptions of value. The enriching themes of Sienese renaissance artwork that explores religion, death, holiness will no longer be fixed in its original setting, but re-routed in today’s contemporary practice and marketplace. Ultimately, proving that grappling iconographic tensions between these secular and devout artistic practices is much more interlinked than one may suspect.

The evocative exaltation and spirituality channelled through overt imagery will challenge the inherent binary of religion and the transient online sphere. Equally, the coded elements of Catholic iconography that provoked a complexity within the seemingly shallow spectrum of pop art, could perhaps offer the same to NFTs. The established parallels of value, exchange, access, and tangible skill of the artist will be forcefully engaged through the cross- pollination of artistic paradigms. The overlap between the contemporary and sacred would be punctuated through its immortalization via a virtual marketplace. This is also where life and death come as a performative element as the works are given a second life, an immortal realm that transcends physicality and can have an eternal ability to generate capital. Again, forging a crossover between the eternal presence of Christ and the eternal influence of consumerism.