NIVETHA NANDAKUMAR finds different angles to the religious at Shipton Gallery.
On a packed opening night in early December, God Willing, an exhibition curated by Isabella Greenwood, debuted at Shipton Gallery. I could just about make out choir music over all the bustle, hinting at a fascinating collection of work that explored a reconfiguration of the divine experience in the modern world. The featured artists all held complex personal relationships to religion, ones evidently not without strain. And so, much of the work concerned itself with reappropriating religious symbols, prompting reflection on how we recycle and repurpose cultural artefacts to seek out and create meaning in the postmodern epoch. Discontent with the present, it appears, may indeed trigger a tendency to look to the past. Sculptures covered with blood, tattooed leather, moving image works were brought together in the sterile, brutal gallery space, well-suited to the thematic juxtaposition of the fleshiness of religion and the coldness of the information age.
Photo courtesy of Ksenia Burnasheva.
Photo courtesy of Ksenia Burnasheva.
I asked Greenwood about her experience curating the exhibition, and what made her focus on the topic of religion:
“I come from a Roman Catholic background,” she said, “and it was interesting—being queer in a Roman Catholic Italian home.”
She spoke about experiencing religious trauma and the antiquated treatises of the church, though her reflections were overwhelmingly positive—it was clear that she still held a deep respect for religion, along with a love for the beauty within it. She had hoped for the exhibition to reclaim religious symbols in a contemporary climate and, crucially, for queer communities. Equally important, however, was re-evaluating these symbols through a critical lens. The artists took up this theme masterfully: there were prayer beads featuring lesbians, patron saints symbolised by poppers and nipple tassels, and a leather cross with two guns aimed at a trans sex scene: a curt recognition of religious bigotry, and a reminder of all the actions—both of extreme love and extreme hate—that have been taken in the name of religion.
We also spoke about the queerness latent in religion. “Rituals are campy!” Greenwood exclaimed, and I laughed. It’s true, they are theatrical, extravagant, sometimes ridiculous, which in fact inspires community and faith. Some Catholic figures, for example, evoke associations to queerness, like the depictions of Saint Sebastian, which showcase extraordinary male beauty. The saint has thus become “a symbol of homoerotic desire” and “a gay icon”, as observed by the curators from National Museums Liverpool. In God Willing, Saint Sebastian featured symbolically as a vacuum-sealed bottle of poppers. Funnily enough, Sebastian is the patron saint of none other than…athletes.
Traditional portrayals of Saint Sebastian further reveal the eroticism permeating Catholic culture—it has always been a fleshy affair. Greenwood spoke of its guttural aspects: the blood and body of Christ and the “relics” of Saints, the “Book of Job” and the “Apocalypse” all show the centrality of the corporeal. This could be why the modern-day practice of religion may evoke a sense of grounding, an illusion of health, and nostalgia for the past—trapped in concrete cities, spending the majority of our lives in virtual, non-tangible spaces, we have come to lead a disembodied existence. This, perhaps, is where the juxtaposition of pink, fleshy textures and metal spikes, or chrome and brutal architectures figure in the exhibition.
“Faith and religion pervade all parts of our lives,” said Greenwood. We all believe, zealously, in something. “It is important not to strip away the religious in our lives,” she continued. I was left wondering what do we mean when we say we have a “religious” or “divine” experience. I think it may be synonymous with the notion of the sublime. A “divine” experience—in nature or in art—is one which evokes beauty and terror, and reminds us of what it means to be human: to be earthly, to have limits. I asked Greenwood what religion means to her. “Anything that becomes a symbol—anything that holds a sociocultural charge becomes a religious object. We have to ask, in classical faith and in contemporary culture: what are those symbols we are worshipping? And how can we take those symbols back?”
I also spoke to Dyke Viagra, an artist who was raised within the Greek Orthodox Church. To the exhibition, they contributed a cross and prayer beads made of tattooed leather—the bodily experience, once again, tied with the religious. I asked them about the choice of medium: “I think of tattooing as a source of pleasure and of pain. You see, there are clients who are into getting tattoos, and then there are clients who are into getting tattoos.” Their work made me think of religious self-flagellation, embodying not only mental, but also faith-motivated self-inflicted physical punishment, at times as extreme and controversial as starvation or whipping. Pleasure can be derived from pain, like reward and heavenly glory are folded into earthly suffering, as in beliefs of the Abrahamic religions—“the meek shall inherit the Earth”. If not for religion, would we believe that a certain kind of nobility is attained through suffering?
The tattoo, thus, can be thought of as a religious symbol—an expression of conviction in a belief, or an image which represents it. It becomes a relic, a story dependent on flesh and sacrifice, embodying identity. Something like a saint’s relic, a piece of the body which represents the entirety of a person.
“How many tattoos do you have?” I asked Viagra.
“Sixty-two,” they replied, “and I regret six of them.”
I think there is such a thing as a bad tattoo—but those, too, are important, for they represent moments of divinity. Making a deeply personal change like this requires a moment where the self is considered with dignity and solemnity. Archaic 01, for example, turns the tattooed “skin” into an object with which one prays—into something sacred through which the divine is sought out.
“I think we need a new kind of religion,” concluded Greenwood. Perhaps one that can comfort us and preserve the divine experience in times of loneliness, uncertainty and dread for the future, and one that is much more inclusive. The thought-provoking exhibition, with its new patron saints, places of worship, and religious iconography, opened my eyes to the various interactions of divinity in the modern world. So, you may ask yourself: what does religion mean to you?
Featured image: installation view. Courtesy of Ksenia Burnasheva and the gallery.
