The Art of Queer(ing) Religion
The censoring of David Wojnarowicz's video "Fire in my Belly" at the
Smithsonian portraiture show Hide/Seek last year, under pressure
from the radical religious right, reminds us that intermingling the
sexuality and materiality of bodies with the transcendental concepts and
questions of spirituality and religion can still shock. But as Janet
Jakobsen queries in the Afterword to this special issue, just what is it
about this alliance, in many ways so pedestrian and central to everyday
life, as well as contemporary human experience, that creates such
controversy?
The staying power of moral panic over the intersection between body
and religion, religion and sexuality, invokes the famous culture wars
ignited in 1980s: from Wojnarowicz's early collages, Andres Serrano's
photograph Piss Christ, and Robert Mapplethorpe's erotic
photographs of black men that inflamed those on both the left and right,
to Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary made with elephant dung, a
sign of sacred fertility in his native Nigeria, which caused so much
controversy at the Brooklyn Museum's Sensation show in 1999.
These controversies did more than polarize; they also led to drastic
cuts in public funding for the arts that are still with us today. And so
is the censoring of artwork that engages the overlaps of bodily and
spiritual life. One could be forgiven for desiring a little "difference"
in this repetition. To this end, we have made Wojnarowicz's censored
video available so viewers can make their own assessment, largely
impossible for previous, pre-Internet controversies.
The Catholic League, central to recent culture war protests against
federal funding for the arts, and a key player in the censorship of
Wojnarowicz's video and Ofili's artwork, defines its mission as one of
defending against "anti-Catholicism." The latter is defined on its own
terms, however, with little resemblance to the historical, nativist
anti-Catholicism against working-class Catholic immigrants in the 19th
and early 20th century, nativism more similar to the oppression against
today's Latina/o immigrants than any supposed defamations against the
Church. For the Catholic League, by contrast, "anti-Catholics" are
defined as anyone, including progressive Catholics, who disagree with
the hierarchical principle of papal infallibility or the conservative,
rightward shift of the Vatican, anyone who dares to invoke the principle
of the "people's church" or who points out the increasing abrogation of
the democratic reforms of Vatican II. Yet, the ludicrousness of attempts
to censor and exclude the body and sexuality in religious
representations, including art dear to the Catholic tradition, is
palpable. No matter that all these artists say their work is meant to
open up and expand reflection on religion and suffering, rather than
sacrilege, as even Sister Wendy, the Catholic art critic, agrees. Far
from controversial or cutting edge, the entire history of art (Christian
art, especially) evidences the need to visualize the invisible, and the
use of bodies to visually manifest idea(l)s beyond them. Michelango's
fresco on the Sistine Chapel is centered on the image of Adam's naked
body touching God's own, which symbolizes creation. Bernini's Ecstacy of
St. Theresa in the Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome shows the saint in
the throes of ecstasy—ecstasy being used here as a sign of her holiness.
And the entire array of depictions of Jesus Christ on the cross makes
use of his sensuality to convey both his holiness and human suffering.
The videos, films and artwork in this section seek to re-insert the
body back into religious imagery, as well as create space for those
typically excluded. Fig Trees' attempts to (re)appropriate and
queer religious imagery, seeking a way to celebrate queer memory—without
memorializing away insights about struggle in AIDS protest movements—is
a fitting tribute to the effort and struggle to include the body in
religious and spiritual space. Similarly, Kaucyila Brooke's "Tit for
Twat" rethinks the heterosexism of biblical and other narratives of
origin, bringing "Madam and Eve"—as well as representations from popular
culture, such as "trash" talk show culture, so big in creating the "Adam
and Eve, not Adam and Steve" common sense of the early 1990s—into the
Garden. Even controversies about gay marriage, whether one thinks them
a vehicle for progressivism or conservatism, reiterate the censorship
and exclusion of queer bodies from the altar, if not religion. But
religion is not the only source of censorship and—as the controversy
over gay marriage, the "folding" to pressure by conservative politicians
at the Smithsonian, or Guiliani's bullying of the Brooklyn Museuem
show—the "secular" state is far from having a monopoly on progressivism.
The quickly censored Iranian popular film Marmoulak, reviewed by
Minoo Moallem, demonstrates the difficulty inclusion of the body—in this
case the popular culture and kooche va bazar language of the
"thug", "passing" for the respectable, educated clergyman—has across
religious, and secular, lines. Ins Kromminga's Phallometer, a
reflection on the existential status of intersexed persons, plays with
the way in which gender space has become liminal, metaphysical space,
not unlike the way in which modern art came to stand in for religious
contemplation in elite, educated circles in the twentieth century,
policed and excluded nonetheless.
Lastly, the art section ends with some collections of radical faerie
and queer art that queer religion, for its own good. The Sisters of
Perpetual Indulgence playfully (re)appropriate the religious imagery of
their childhood, weaving their desire and bodies back into an
exclusionary narrative, stirring up some culture-jam along the way.
Carlo Quispe's DIY, underground comics reconfigure community desire and
spirituality for a queer sensibility. And Paul Wirhun's Skull
Project demonstrates the role the queering and bricolage of
religious artistic practices, such as pysanky, can have for secular
practices, spirituality and protest. Here's for some difference in
repetition!
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