The Kent State University Museum unveiled this year’s spring exhibition with a reception March 20 where the area head of the textiles program, John Paul Morabito, introduced and discussed their “John Paul Morabito: Madonna dei Femminellə” exhibition.
Morabito and Museum Curator Sara Hume worked together to build the exhibition. Morabito joined Kent State as an assistant professor and area head in August 2022 and has had numerous exhibitions across the U.S., but the museum showcase marks their first solo exhibition in Ohio.
“I’ve been an exhibiting artist for well over a decade,” Morabito said. “I’ve done a couple of smaller exhibitions in the state of Ohio, but this is my first single exhibition. It’s really special to be able to share what I do with the community here, with my colleagues here, and with my students here.”
Morabito’s work emphasized and incorporated the camp aesthetic and queer art within classic paintings. They said each piece is purposefully exaggerated with color and high saturation.
“There’s a complex process of reducing color and abstracting color in order to translate an image,” they said at the reception.
They created 24 pieces in the collection between 2018 and 2020, and the exhibit showcases 14 of them.
Morabito said their fascination with the Madonna, which means “my lady,” in Italian Renaissance and their Italian heritage is what inspired them. Each piece is a spinoff of a Madonna painting and their baby.
“The paintings are retraced through the digital loom and then they fail to become the painting, and through that failure, there is an opening that happens,” Morabito said during the reception. “You look at the image and you can see it’s a reference to its original, but of course, it’s not the original.”
Berend Hawks, a master’s student in studio art with a textiles focus, attended the event to show his support to the professor.
“John Paul’s my head of department, so I wanted to support them,” he said. “I think it’s really lovely that we have such amazing faculty that is so present and important in contemporary art.”
Hawks expressed how happy he is that the museum is showcasing art related to queer, religious and camp themes.
“Art is cultural commentary,” he said. “Whether you’re a participant in that or you understand it or not, it can open your eyes up to seeing new things and experiencing different aspects of the world.”
The collection will stay in the Higbee Gallery until June 22, 2025. Morabito posts updates of their work and new exhibits on their Instagram.
“I made this work for a community of people who have been through the kind of world that I’ve been through,” Morabito said. “I think it’s really important that we make space for [students] to feel that they are seen and that they have a place to be.”
Aryn Kauble is a reporter. Contact him at [email protected].
