We will be a city upon a hill

This series of marble paintings continues Jasmina Cibic’s investigation into the role of art in staging political mythology and collective belief. Each circular marble panel is partially overpainted with acrylic depictions of cloudy skies drawn from meteorological archives recorded on the dates of major political treaties and alliances. A visible horizon line divides exposed stone from painted atmosphere, creating a tension between material permanence and the instability of political projection.

The clouds originate from historical weather reports accompanying moments of diplomatic choreography, where favourable skies often became symbolic extensions of political optimism and ideological destiny. By isolating these atmospheric details, Cibic foregrounds the role of chance, spectacle and aesthetic framing in the construction of history.

Historically associated with monuments and state architecture, marble functions here as a material carrier of authority, while the painted sky operates as its scenographic counterpart: mutable, symbolic and emotionally persuasive. The seam between stone and image becomes both horizon and rupture, exposing how political narratives are naturalised through visual culture. Balancing between landscape, abstraction and political allegory, the works position the sky itself as a stage upon which ideological futures are projected.

The title We Will Be a City Upon a Hill borrows from Ronald Reagan’s repeated invocation of the biblical metaphor used to frame the United States as a moral and political beacon. In Cibic’s work, the phrase becomes a critique of patriarchal nation-building and the messianic language through which political power repeatedly casts itself as visionary, exceptional and historically destined. Detached from its rhetorical certainty, the title exposes how political identities are constructed through carefully staged narratives of elevation, purity and collective aspiration.