Vicar in “no to religous censorship” shock.
The image to the right is a holographic image of Jesus that morphs into Osama bin Laden. It was designed by Australian artist Priscilla Bracks for the Blake Prize, an Australian religious art competition that also features a statue of the “Virgin” Mary in a burqa.
The artist said that she had not set out to be offensive:
Absolutely not, no, no. I am not interested in being offensive. I am interested in having a discussion and asking questions about how we think about our world and what we accept and what we don’t accept.
Shockingly, a local vicar, Reverend Rod Pattenden, said that he did not expect any controversy, and that he was looking to spark debate about spirituality in a world that was “cynical, degraded and in crisis”. He added that he didn’t expect controversy “because the Christian community doesn’t look at art a great deal”.
Slightly more here, where they point out that there have been no threats of legal action, no violence and none of the other things that erupt whenever an image of Mohammed is presented in an irreverent (or indeed any) way.
He obviously wasn’t contributing to Radio 4’s “Any Answers” today where a couple of people insisted that the Christian Church was right to ban Yoga – yes, that exercise routine Yoga – because of the spiritual side being in contradition with the tenets of Christian faith.
In fact, it was quite scary the way that the contributing Christians arrogantly claimed to have the TRUE path to light, eternity etc. and screw everyone else because they were wrong. I laughed heartily at their stupidity but then it reminded me of why mult-faith socities don’t work.
There are three really huge deities from Palestine or the middle east or wherever. Almost all of the other ones are from elsewhere. It might be nice to concentrate on those for awhile. How about Odin?
Funny too how Jesus is always caucasian in these pictures: wasn’t he an Arab?!
Marc- I was thinking the face of Osama is probably a lot closer to what Jesus looked like, than the face in the original artwork.
In which case I am unclear as to what question the morphing is supposed to ask
I think he looks a bit like Frank Zappa in the big pic.
If it’s true that “the Christian community doesn’t look at art a great deal” then that would go a long way towards explaining why they are so closed-minded.
But it’s not true. You only have to go to a Catholic temple to see all the artistic idols and icons that they bow down to.
But there’s all the difference in the world between looking at “your own art”, and looking at art which sees the world (and you) through different eyes. Not that this is a problem restricted to many of the churches, of course.
[…] John Howard and the Catholic Archbishop of Syndey George Pell. The Virgin Mary in a burka, and a Christ / bin Laden hologram were the contentious entries that time. Monitor @ 10:57 […]