Blasphemous Feminist Art. Incarnate Politics of Identity from a Post-Secular Perspective¹

Blasphemous Feminist Art. Incarnate Politics of Identity from a Post-Secular Perspective¹ Anne-Marie Korte Introduction: »Blasphemous« Feminist Art Among the increasing number of publicly exhibited works of art that have been accused of blasphemy or sacrilege in the context of cultural identity politics in Western societies, religiously connoted feminist art works and performances seem to stand out and fulfill a particularly provocative role. The works of art in ques- tion have remarkable common traits in their disputed imagery. They connect almost life-sized and often naked human bodies to iconic sacred scenes of Western Christian culture and art, such as the suffering Jesus on the Cross, the Last Supper, the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus, or the Pieta (Mater Dolorosa). Well known examples are works such as Ecce Homo by Elisabeth Ohlson (Sweden), i.n.r.i. by Serge Bramly & Bettina Rheims (France) (Fig.), Yo Mama’s Last Supper by Renee Cox (usa), Our Lady by Alma López (usa), Blood Ties by Katarzyna Kozyra (Poland), and Passion by Dorota Nieznalska (Poland). More recently, songs and acts consisting of social, political, and religious criticism, performed »provocatively« by pop artists such as Madonna, Lady Gaga, or the Russian feminist punk rock group, Pussy Riot, have become publicly con- tested for comparable reasons. All these works of visual or performative art have been accused — more or less formally — of blasphemy or sacrilege, which contributed to both their notoriety and their controversiality, by attracting huge media attention. Not only have conservative religious interest groups and religious leaders and representatives targeted these works of art and performances; secular politicians and civil authorities have also declared them offen- sive, and both parties have tried or even succeeded in stopping, prohibiting, or banning their public exhibition or performance. Anne-Marie Korte - 9783846763452 Downloaded from Brill.com10/06/2021 05:27:05PM via free access [Fig. 1] Cover of Serge Bramly and Bettina Rheims, I.N.R.I., New York, The works of art and performances involved are created predominantly by female artists, performers, and activists who explicate their aim to contribute to the emancipation of women and ethnic or sexual minorities. They explain that, to this end, they address — and in some aspects re-enact or rework — the faith traditions in which they have been raised. (In all these cases, this per- tains to particular forms of Christianity, as will be discussed later). In their work, they consciously bring together emancipatory issues and core religious imagery from their own upbringing. They focus in particular on the pre- Anne-Marie Korte - 9783846763452 Downloaded from Brill.com10/06/2021 05:27:05PM via free access - sentation and staging of human bodies (including their own) in their most sensitive aspects (i.e., as naked, delicate, sensuous, vulnerable, wounded, tor- tured). They explain that this is the material or medium by which they envi- sion both their most hurtful and their most hopeful and joyous experiences; at the same time, it offers them ammunition for political, cultural, and religious criticism. They often use the controversy that their work evokes as an enlarged public podium to state their political and artistic views. In this paper, I aim to clarify why these »religiously embodied« feminist works of art are so prone to current controversy, public upheaval, and legal action, in particular to accusations of blasphemy and sacrilege. The case of Madonna’s crucifixion scene in her Confessions on a Dance Floor show () will be my core example, and the disciplinary fields that inform my analysis are religious studies, theology, and gender studies. I will argue that the controversy that these feminist works of art and performances evoke is related to the identity politics of ethnic and sexual minorities and of religious communities, interest groups, and lobbyists involved in a tug-of-war over shifting positions of privilege and marginalization in modern, neo-liberal societies. The deliber- ate and ostentatious interplay of gendered corporeality and (homo) sexuality with religious themes forms the symbolic arena of this culture battle. The clashes that these works of art engender are positioned on the fault line of religion and secu- larity, and their controversiality is deeply embedded in the ideological debates over this demarcation. It is my contention that the many instances of alleged blasphemous imagery featuring gendered corporeality and non-heteronormative sexuality that are part of the so-called culture wars of the past two decades are related to a par- Anne-Marie Korte - 9783846763452 Downloaded from Brill.com10/06/2021 05:27:05PM via free access ticular social and cultural shift in modern and predominantly secularizing societies regarding the public meaning of both religion and sexuality. This shift concerns the position and public perception of both religion and sexuality as identity markers in their mutual interrelatedness. At stake is an oscillating relation- ship of religion and sexuality as modern individual and collective markers of identity. Significant for this instability is the emergence of a dichotomous public discourse in which a secular position is equated with acceptance of sexualities in the plural and a religious position with rejection thereof. The cultural shift this implies could be seen as a reshuffling of prominence, power, and visibility in relation to the former established social and personal meaning of both religion and sexuality. Until the late th century, religious identity in West- ern countries counted as a primary marker of one’s social position, while sexual preference and behavior were matters of privacy to the point of invisibility. Most recently, the affirmation of sexuality in the plural, in all its (public) mani- festations, has come to count for many as a core value of modern Western life, while religious identity has been deemed increasingly private, or is supposed to be. The many current cultural conflicts gravitating around religion, gender roles, and sexual diversity are thus not only indicators of changing views of sexuality and its role in the formation of individual and collective identity, but also of the fundamentally changing role of religion in modern society. This is why I think that an attentive investigation of these interrelated changes, from both a post- secular and a gender-critical perspective, should be at the forefront of the analysis of contemporary accusations of »blasphemous« works of art. Before discussing my thesis, I will first elaborate these analytical perspectives. Anne-Marie Korte - 9783846763452 Downloaded from Brill.com10/06/2021 05:27:05PM via free access - Blasphemous Art in Post-Secular and Gender-Critical Perspective From October -, , the World Conference on Artistic Freedom of Expres- sion was held in Oslo, Norway under the heading All that is banned is desired. It included a brief appearance of a member of the besieged Pussy Riot punk rock group. A central cause of concern expressed was that censorship by religious organizations and the phenomenon of religiously argued bans on artistic freedom of expression are on the rise, against the expectations of »many in the West.« However, since the fatwa against Salman Rushdie in , Western attention has centered predominantly on censorship and attacks originating from mili- tant, fundamentalist Islam. This tendency tendency of interest was also visible at the Oslo conference. The fact that there is also an increase of Christian groups and institutions in the us and Europe that raise objections to, or try to ban, works of art is less publicly discussed. But as early as , the exhibition of Andres Serrano’s controversial photograph Piss Christ, winner of the South- eastern Center for Contemporary Art’s Awards in the Visual Arts competition and partly sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, opened a national and recurrent debate in the us, fueled by Christian organizations, on the conditions and restrictions of the creation and exposition of publicly funded art. The subsequent exhibition of Serrano’s Piss Christ in museums in Aus- tralia, the uk, and France led to similar debates and confrontations at local and national levels, including physical attacks on the displayed photograph. When, in September , Piss Christ was on display at the Andres Serrano overview Body and Spirit in the Edward Tyler Nahem Gallery in New York, Anne-Marie Korte - 9783846763452 Downloaded from Brill.com10/06/2021 05:27:05PM via free access religious groups and politicians called for President Barack Obama to denounce this work of art, comparing it to the anti-Islamic film Innocence of Muslims (), which had been condemned by the White House earlier that month. In these and similar instances, a resurging and pugnacious discourse on blasphemy and sacrilege can be found in which both religious and non-religious parties have a particular stake. At first sight, the manifestation and spread of this discourse during the past two decades seems to belie the fact that, in the course of the th century, the legal prohibition of blasphemy and sacrilege in most European countries (as well as in the us, Canada, and Australia) has gradually been waived or diluted, or become obsolete. This paradoxical state of affairs has given rise to discussion, initiated by philosophers, historians, theo- logians, and scholars of religion, on the reappearance and meaning of (accusa-

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