Exvoto | 2024

mixed media on GUITAR

Carved electric guitar, acrylic finish, oxidized gilding, engraved moko-inspired motifs

“The color doesn’t conceal; it yields. And what emerges isn’t simply old — it feels sacred.”

The body of this guitar is coated in a sea-green pigment that recalls not the deep ocean, but shallow tropical waters — alive, sunlit, deceptive in their clarity. Beneath this surface, time presses through: worn-out gold traces, roughened wood tones, and engraved moko-like symbols begin to show, like the remnants of something once buried, now exposed by weather, by hands, by memory.

The name Exvoto comes from the Latin ex voto suscepto — “from the vow made.” Traditionally, it refers to votive objects, humble offerings left at altars after a divine encounter or intervention. In this context, the guitar becomes just that:

Not a tool for performance, but a personal relic — a carved token of inner passage, of creative commitment. It is both a vessel and a gesture: a sound object as a vow.

The wear is intentional. The fading is not an aesthetic of decay, but of revelation. Layers recede, and something ancient and symbolic begins to emerge — as if the instrument remembers a former self.

This is not about nostalgia, nor preservation. It is about ritual and transformation.

The engraved marks aren’t ornamental. They behave more like a script, or a scar — a language belonging not to the listener, but to the maker.

Exvoto isn’t simply played — it is invoked.

A personal rite cast in wood and metal.

A soundless chant awaits ignition.