EXHIBITION: “I hope . . .” by Chiharu Shiota, January 12–March 21, 2021, König Galerie, Berlin: Grace Ebert of Colossal writes, “A towering expanse of red thread, a new installation by Chiharu Shiota suspends 10,000 letters within the nave of Berlin’s König Galerie, a Brutalist-style space located in the former St. Agnes church. The immersive construction runs floor to ceiling and is awash with notes from people around the world who share their dreams following a particularly devastating year. Aptly named ‘I hope…,’ the large-scale project hangs two wire boats that appear to float upward at its center, evoking travel into an unknown future.” On view for a few more days!
+++
SONGS:
>> “Saint Ephrem” by Prairie House Hymns: Sam(antha) Connour, whom you might know as Lo Sy Lo, has a new home for her church music: she will now be releasing it under the name Prairie House Hymns, which harkens to her roots in small-town churches and Midwestern culture. (“Seriously melodic theology from the Great Plains”!) Her first single since this rebrand is a prayer attributed to the fourth-century Syrian theologian Ephrem. “In the Byzantine tradition, this prayer is considered to be the most succinct summation of the spirit of Great Lent and is hence the Lenten prayer par excellence, prayed during all Lenten weekday services” (source). The video below is a demo that Connour recorded in November 2020, followed by the official recording released March 15, which includes backup vocals by Alec Watson. I’ve added the song to the Art & Theology Lent Playlist on Spotify.
O Lord and Master of my life
Keep me from indifference
Keep me from discouragement
Lust of power and idle chatterWill you grant to me your servant
The spirit of wholeness of being
Humblemindedness
Patience and loveO Lord and King of my life
Grant me grace to be aware
Of my sins and not to judge
My brother and my sisterFor you are blessed
Now and forever
For you are blessed
Now and forever
>> “Your Blood” by Matt Redman, arr. Sam JC Lee: This video recording is from the “Jazz Hymns and Liturgy” concert at The Lilypad in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on February 16, 2020. Composer, bassist, and bandleader Sam JC Lee [previously] leads his group in an original jazz arrangement of this contemporary hymn. The musicians are Gabriela Martina on vocals, Gregory Groover Jr. on sax, Jiri Nedmoa on piano, Tyson D. Jackson on drums, and Lee himself on bass.
+++
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION/PILGRIMAGE: Global Stations of the Cross 2021: These fifteen contemporary artworks, organized around the Stations of the Cross but with a multifaith approach, were curated by Dr. Aaron Rosen, director of the Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. In 2019 I participated, as pilgrim, in the Amsterdam iteration of the annual Stations of the Cross project that Rosen cofounded (which I chronicled in detail here), and his project inspired the Stations of the Cross experience I designed, independently, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum—which, I know from people having reached out to me, has been utilized by several churches, families, and neighborhoods over the years.
Though “in previous years, the central experience of Stations of the Cross involved walking through host cities, inviting visitors to experience the incidental insights and revelations that come from navigating urban spaces in search of sacred experiences,” COVID has required adaptation. So Rosen took the opportunity to make this year’s exhibition multicity and global, and entirely online. Audio commentary is provided by the artists, as are photos of each work. The theme is “monuments and memorials,” and many of the artists have a personal connection to the topics they address, which include the execution of Catholics under the Joseon dynasty in nineteenth-century Korea, political imprisonment under Stalin, the bombing of Coventry during World War II, displacements caused by the British Partition of India in 1947, rising Sinophobia (anti-Chinese sentiment) this past year, California wildfires, gun violence, police brutality, and the ongoing refugee crisis. Here is an excerpt from Rosen’s curatorial statement:
Each station in this journey responds to a monument or memorial, reflecting a tumultuous year in which fresh memorials sprung up to grieve the dead and historic monuments to prejudice were toppled and dismantled. We invited artists to keep these connotations in mind, but ultimately we left the terms ‘monument’ and ‘memorial’ open to interpretation, for artists to construct as they saw fit. Some, like Todd Forsgren, turned familiar images, like the Washington Monument, on their head—evoking the disorienting, disturbing politics of the past four years, and especially the recent insurrection at the nation’s capital. G. Roland Biermann photographed the Millennium Wheel in London, a tourist attraction that now sits sedentary as a stone, lit by an eerie blue light in honor of National Health Service workers. Others chose sites which are legible as memorials only to an intimate circle, who know the tragedy which transpired there. This is the case for Antonio McAfee’s work, which honors his cousin, murdered at a Baltimore metro stop. Another artist, S. Billie Mandle, reminds us that the natural world can, within moments, turn into a graveyard, as she reveals in a photograph taken in the aftermath of devastating wildfires in her home state of California.
There is no single memorial which can effectively capture the myriad traumas of the past year, from the staggering toll of the pandemic to bleak examples of systemic racism and climate crises of biblical proportion. While these challenges have intersected this past year, often with devasting effect, Stations of the Cross does not attempt to summarize them, or generalize the agonizing impact they have had on specific communities, families, and individuals. Instead, this project invites viewers to bear witness to this troubling season through the intimate reflections of individual artists, who find in the Passion a lens to interpret the present.
. . .
While the celebration of resurrection is unabashedly Christian, as it should be, the via dolorosa offers a path that can be instructive across multiple faiths, and none. Christians may travel its route in anticipation of salvation, but that is not the only possible destination. The Stations of the Cross invite an empathy that knows no theological copyright and requires no passport. It demands, quite simply, the capacity to behold—to truly see—the suffering of the Other in our midst. And, at least for the moment, that may be miracle enough.
+++
LECTURE: “Otto Dix and the Gospel of Matthew: An Exercise in Wirkungsgeschichte” by Dr. Jonathan T. Pennington: In 1960 the German expressionist artist Otto Dix [previously] published Matthäus Evangelium, a cycle of thirty-three lithographs based on the Gospel of Matthew, recounting Jesus’s birth, healing ministry and other miracles, passion, and resurrection. Last year Sojourn Arts, a ministry of Sojourn Church in Louisville, Kentucky, hosted an exhibition of this body of work as well as a contextualizing talk by New Testament scholar and Sojourn East staff preacher Jonathan T. Pennington, given February 21, 2020. Pennington shows how Dix uses Matthew to say something about his own time and culture, and how Dix helps us see certain things about Matthew because of his own situatedness. Starting at 13:25, Pennington walks through the images one by one, interpreting them with a facility I don’t often see in preachers without an art specialization! (He says he spent several weeks studying and reflecting on the lithographs, which goes to show how an image’s meaning reveals itself to those who are willing to sit with it; a bit of biographical research helps too.)
The exhibition Otto Dix: Matthäus Evangelium is available for rental for just $250/month plus shipping—a killer deal! The loaner is Sandra Bowden, a collector of twentieth- and twenty-first-century biblical art who is also an artist herself. She’s such a generous person, and I had the pleasure of meeting her once at her home in Cape Cod, not far from the Community of Jesus, of which she is an oblate.
Art & Theology 