Written by:
Katie Peoples
Photographer:
Janet McKenzie
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this Issue of Curve:
17#9
There’s been a lot of huff lately surrounding religious images and what people can do with them. The latest, being the Right’s attack on the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco because of this year’s promotional poster, a take on the “Last Supper” that features an African American Jesus, a drag queen and lots of leather and toys.
In Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More Kittredge Cherry, a former minister in the LGBT community and operator of JesusInLove.org (the first Web site devoted to queer Christ), brings to the masses a book of images that have been called blasphemous and disgusting. The book shows paintings and sculptures created by artists who are daring enough to show their work. Some have been given death threats and others have had their work vandalized. Most are unable to find a place willing to host their work.
One piece, “Madonna, Lover and Son” by Becki Jane Harrelson, shows Jesus with his two mommies, a turkey baster hidden in the bushes is a play on artificial insemination and virgin birth. Another series of photographs called Ecce Homo by Elizabeth Ohlson Wallin reinterprets famous scenes from the Bible including the angel Gabriel delivering a test tube to Mary and her partner; Jesus giving his Sermon on the Mount to a group of leatherclad men and women; and Jesus dying of AIDS in a play on the “Pieta.”
This work is important, according to Kittredge, because it is natural that people would want to portray Jesus Christ as a reflection of themselves. She points out in her introduction that European Christians always portray Christ as white, while Asians portray him as Asian.
“These new images are much needed now because Christian rhetoric is used to justify discrimination against women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people,” she says.
One such artist who knows about hate mail and death threats is Janet McKenzie, whose African American “Jesus of the People” graces the cover of the book.
“It came from such a place of love,” she says. But despite the harsh criticism she and other artists have faced, there has been positive attention as well.
“I spoke to many people,” she says. “Lesbians, gays and women of all color have said the same thing: Thank you for opening up our eyes to see how God created us in His image.”
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