Taking a decidedly introspective turn in her work during isolation, Maddalena, a San Diegan sculptural artist, was brought face-to-face with what she felt compelled to relieve the world of through her art: alienation, pain, sorrow, isolation, and of course, loss. One and Many explores the visual poetics of material relationships developed through labor-intensive sculptural processes. Ritually, each day Maddalena tenderly venerated sticks by charring them in fire, marking them with chalk, and sealing the ends and openings with wax. Her visual metaphor grasps and honors the humanity of each individual who died from COVID-19, and offers the opportunity to recognize the life cycle as the ultimate common denominator between all people. Maddalena signifies that the 321 sticks represent the average number of COVID-19 deaths per day since the beginning of the pandemic as of April 2021.

Terminal 2 East, Pre-Security, Alcove Display Cases