The artist's parents were followers of the Church when they were born; their father was a pastor and most of the family were converted. They left the Church when the artist was twelve. This work is the artist's return to the experience of growing up in a radical religious community and its lasting impact. Working with family archives, staged reenactments and photographed artefacts, the artist unveils the structures of indoctrination, revealing the layers of psychological conditioning. Unfolding over time, the project documents the artist's negotiation of personal agency in relation to the relentless presence of the All-Seeing.
The artist remembers the Blood and Flesh standing on a table, covered with a white tablecloth. A matzah baked by their mum symbolized the Body, and red grape juice symbolized the Blood waiting for the pastor to give it to each baptized follower to eat and drink from. They never could, still too young to be baptized.
This book explores radical religiousness. The artist began working on this project four years ago, trying to find within themselves what is true in the face of the indoctrination that still shapes their choices. They realised that they had never stopped negotiating their life with the disembodied, all-seeing eye of the wrathful God of their childhood.
Nearly all their family were baptised; the artist never was, as they were too young. It finally became clear to them that this is how this process needed to end—they needed to agree to their past, at last, and liberate themselves from it. Thus, with no pastor, with their mum and sister as witnesses, they baptised themselves in a river into their own truth, twenty years later.
