Maria Molteni is a queer interdisciplinary artist, designer, educator, and mystic based in Tennessee and Massachusetts. Their practice spans painting, printmaking, dance, research, ritual, and play-based collaboration, blending embodied mysticism with tactile problem-solving. Working across fiber, found-object sculpture, textile, video, performance, and publication, Molteni engages with themes of spiritual depth, conceptual rigor, and formal satisfaction. Well known for labor-intensive, site-specific public artworks, they have hand-painted seven full basketball courts, incorporating craft-based imagery such as braiding, weaving, and quilting. Braids symbolize feminine power and communal cooperation in their work, transforming ground-based murals into “altars to the sky” and “horizontal monuments.” Molteni explores gender expansiveness through hair, using it as a personal and artistic medium. From fiber-based works to large-scale murals, they celebrate hair as a conduit for divine masculine and feminine energy, honoring its infinite expressive potential in their daily life and creative practice.
