Presented as part of the multi-site curatorial project NOWS THE TIME, Lesley Kerman’s Reconstructing Duccio offers a visual portal into the deeply religious allegory of Christs crucifixion through its temporal manifestation within the virtual realm. The scenes following the Passion of Christ will be digitally mediated across the commercial epicentre of Exeter’s city centre and hence address our established predilections regarding the Western canon through decentralized mediums, locations, and a disrupted understanding of value.

Originally commissioned by the city of Siena in 1308, this altarpiece today is remediated and reinserted as an artwork located in the crypto-verse and offered as a non-fungible token. In being both physically dispersed and digitally resolved within the richly commercial realm of Exeter, Kerman’s reconstruction of Duccio brings light on how death and spirituality can be decentralised through contemporary sites of worship. We are effectively offering homeopathic drips of Duccio’s practice in secular spaces to question how exchange value inflicts on the way in which we engage with the narrative and physicality of the altarpiece. Through its physical fragmentation and positional agency, the minted Maesta places the notions of worship and fungibility in wrought contention.