Dante - Shield

A linocut from the 2024 Dante cycle. The shield motif draws on the heraldic and martial imagery threaded through the Inferno and Purgatorio — Dante encounters knights, family arms, and emblems of civic faction across the Comedy — and on the broader medieval visual vocabulary the poem inhabits. Composed as a single relief image, the print centres on a shield form rendered in the flat shapes characteristic of Ho's linocut work, where carved areas of negative space carry as much weight as the inked surface. Within the cycle, Shield sits alongside other emblematic single-object sheets such as Star, functioning as one node in a larger sequenced reading rather than as a standalone illustration. Ho's broader practice often uses heraldry-adjacent forms — crests, banners, family signs — as carriers of personal and ancestral memory, particularly in the artists' books that draw on her Peranakan Chinese-British background. The Dante series extends this interest into a literary frame, treating the medieval shield as both narrative prop and inherited symbol.