Dante - Star

A linocut from Ho's 2024 Dante cycle, taking its motif from the closing word of each of the three canticles of the Divine Comedy — Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso each end with stelle, the Italian for stars. The single-block linocut renders the celestial image in cleanly carved positive-and-negative shapes typical of Ho's relief practice, with the white of the paper carrying as much compositional weight as the inked passages. Within the cycle, Star functions as a structural marker, echoing Dante's own use of the word as a refrain across the three books. The Dante series belongs to Ho's longstanding commitment to serialised, literary, and meditative print sequences, where each sheet contributes a discrete image to a larger reading. It also continues her interest in night-sky and constellation imagery, visible earlier in Cassiopeia (2019). The flat, graphic register of linocut suits Dante's medieval cosmology, with its concentric heavens and clearly demarcated realms.