Description: Morselli’s Escalera VI depicts a set of stairs from which water trickles. A suffused vapor at the top of the stairs evokes a sense of mysticism in the scene. In other paintings of the series, Morselli reinforces that sense of otherworldliness by adding a beam of light that illuminates the stairs from the top-left corner or hints at deterioration by collapsing the structure of the bottom steps. Morselli confers to her stairs a transcendental value that is similarly displayed in Anselm Kiefer’s architectural spaces, although she does so in terms that are not as overtly political. -Text by Francesca Giani