The beads appear to be made of soap bars! They have had designs carved out of them. It must have taken ages, given that each rosary has about 60 beads on it.

This exhibition does not simply present history - it brings it to life through a series of sensory experiences - auditory and tactile - that turn the visit into a true initiatory journey. In light of today's environmental challenges, the exhibition also invites reflection on our relationship with natural resources. As Lucy Lippar defines it, "Eco-art is not just art about nature but art that engages with natural systems, both in process and materials." Through this lens, the exhibition raises questions about our collective responsibility toward natural and cultural heritage.

You should also check out each rosary, as they all have different designs.

Thus, the exhibition aligns itself with an approach in which contemporary art becomes a mediator between past and present, between nature and culture, between memory and future.

The final rosary looks like it has some sort of honeycomb design in it.

This spiritual dimension of AQUA MEMORIA highlights how water, beyond its vital function, has been a constant vessel of sacredness. The exhibition thus invites reflection on the timelessness of the sacred and its transformations through the centuries, while also questioning our contemporary relationship with spirituality.

That QR code can be scanned for more information about the piece. It takes you to a PDF and is worth reading. It isn't the first time I've come across the work of Miram McConnon either. She did an eco art piece at the Shrine Caves exhibit a few years ago, and also had a mural in one of the Street Art Festivals in Old Town.

This is part of the information page. There is more so scan the code with a phone to read it:

While water purifies, soap itself appeared only late in Western history, even though Pliny The Elder already records its use among the Romans and the Gauls. Introduced as a utilitarian product, it only gained symbolic value as a sign of purity in the 19th century, when hygienist norms and bourgeois moral codes linked physical cleanliness to moral virtue and, often, gendered domination.

This ideological shift turned the female body into an object of control through cleanliness. The figure of the Virgin Mary - pure, white and silent - became the idealized embodiment of a disembodied, desexualized female body in contrast to ancient figures like Aphrodite of Demeter, who were more sensual, fertile, and earthly.

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By suspending three monumental rosaries made of white soap blocks, each dedicated to a female cult figure (Aphrodite, Demeter, Mary), McConnon brings into collision sacred an religious traditions that are often seen as opposites. The choice of cavities at the site's entrance allows the installation to assert itself as a tabernacle. The ensemble powerfully evokes and reconfigures he sites associated with divine female figures, revealing a symbolic and cultural continuity in the way the civilisations that succeed one another on this site conceived the body, the sacred and the religious.

Here's one last shot of the rosaries showing the crucifixes at the bottom. Let's move into the catacombs and see some more of the exhibition.