What constitutes an act of desecration? The work of the Detroit-based artist Tony Rave exhibited controversial discussions of this issue and the implications of reconfiguring religiously themed objects by combining them with images from popular and mass culture.
Rave’s collection includes a series of white porcelain cherubs and other statues, busts and figures of the Virgin Mary – all in Blackface. Some of these figurines are stand-alone pieces while others combine ephemeral images of the Mother with pornography of women in glass cases. Some other works are assembled into larger crafts that include remnants of branded goods: empty Hennessy bottles, Newport menthol cigarette packets, baking soda cans, the Nike emblem, a face painted with Colonel Sanders and logos such as Gucci and Louis Vuitton.
In its modern definition, desecration is not simply the destruction or disrespect of sacred objects, but inherently the notion of deprive them of their sanctity. However, the word “to profane” comes from the Latin proclaim, meaning “to make holy” with the prefix “de-” meaning “of” or “concerning”, as opposed to undo or the opposite of. Arguably, Rave’s work does not de-sanctify the image of the Virgin, but re-sanctifies her symbolic nature by dismantling the long-term systematization of female holiness as purely white. With Mary in Blackface, drooling blood-red paint, we are reminded of the complicated history of how art achieves holiness, and that the worship of idols and holy images – including the female body of Mary – does not belong not just to a European Christian belief system.
The use of sacred subjects in and around art has always been a controversial subject, and with a long history in the pre-modern world. We remember the violent efforts of the Byzantine iconoclasm of the 8th and 9th centuries and the Bildersturm of the Reformation, which held that the making and use of images for Christian worship contradicted the word of the Bible and the Second Commandment. We also know that different sects of Christianity have different rules regarding the placement of idols and religious paintings in churches, if any. Despite these debates, cults of saints were and still are worshiped and prayed to as gods; and the churches still contain paintings of saints, stories from the Bible and statues of holy figures – the original intentions of which were to convey the scriptures to an illiterate public. Similar conversations around representation can also be seen in the history of theater, where the representation and characterization of God on stage has also been heavily debated.
In the 13th century, Western Europe experienced a significant evolution in representations of women and their role in society. This period saw a rise of the vernacular (as opposed to Church Latin), and subsequently the production of love tales, which included elements of the so-called “Orient” influenced by the cross-cultural contacts of the Europeans with Southwest Asia and North Africa. (SWANA), mainly due to Crusader advances from Western Europe. These factors reshaped how devotional practices of and by women were depicted in manuscripts and visual culture. Specifically—because Orientalist images of women aligned “the Orient” with fetishized exoticism—Western European art ontologically reframed the image of virginity within its own moral and ethical parameters, linking a body of white woman with piety and devotion in Latin Christianity. The main character then became the image of a Holy White Mother of God, now objectified and trapped in male desire.
Rave’s work reminds us that the metaphorical qualities attached to the female body go beyond those imposed by Western European colonial practices; that across Europe and the world icons, shrines and statues of the Black Madonna or Black Madonna have long been erected and venerated as equal counterparts. The book also expresses that piety is not purely white; that the allegorical symbolism of Mary – also one of the most important female figures in Islam – functioned emblematically as a reminder of the important role of women in spiritual culture. The lamentation of the Virgin, for example, and the change in its metaphorical depictions aligns with historical shifts in a world that has embraced goddesses as equal to gods, where women have played an active and significant role in ritual culture. , in particular the practice of lamentation, when women negotiated the faith of their communities with the gods. Until it was usurped by male monotheism.
If all this constitutes an act of desecration, so maybe it’s time for us to re-examine how and what our society worships.
