More interesting takes on the buriel of Jesus

"Pieta" by Elizabeth Ohlson Wallin, 1998


The "Jesus" in this picture was a gay man, who was about to die of AIDS. The artist wanted him to pick his Pieta. He chose a female leather bar employee, well known in Stockholm for mothering gay man. They posed at the door of the AIDS ward of a Stockholm hospital.

The man wanted people to remember him after his death - but his "Jesus" experienced his own personal resurrection. Shortly after the photo shoot, he began taking the new Aids drug cocktail. A decade later, Ohlson Wallin could proclaim "Jesus is alive!" And the AIDS ward no longer exists.

Information gleaned from Kittredge Cherry, 'Art that Dares. Gay Jesus, Woman Christ and More' Androgyne press, Berkeley CA, 2007.

Gay images of Jesus

I love these three images, two of which are based on the famous "Consolator" of Carl Bloch (centre). I don't know where the Marilyn Monroe piece comes from, but the gay iconic spoof is from Elizabeth Ohlson-Wallin's "Ecce Homo" series.

The thing about the two alternative takes on the "Consolator", is that they both make exactly the same point. They foreground, and explicitly sexualise the adoration aspect of the painting. I suppose, in the heterosexual version, one may want to update the sexual iconography a bit, by substituting the head and body of Megan Fox, for instance. The gay one speaks a particular iconographic language of a particular, but very recognisable sub-culture.

Now, how come only certain options are available? How come the vocabulary and grammar of religious iconography has been so completely hi-jacked and owned by heterosexual imagists? Naturally, it has to do with the power of the majority. But how come, when the church talks of "listening" to gay people and "dialogue" with us, that our language, our grammar, our vocabulary is not up for discussion?

Homocentric pictures of Jesus

Becki Jayne Harrelson: Judaskiss

Signorelli: The flagellation of Christ

Frances Farmer on the cross - source unknown

Elizabeth Ohlson-Wallin: Krucifix

Maerten can Heemskerck: Man of Sorrows

Giotto: The kiss of Judas

Hans Schaufelein : Crucifixion (1515)

These are some of the images I have collected over the years, of what I would call "homocentric" images of Jesus. The obvious ones, are, of course, those by Elizabeth Ohlson-Wallin and Becki Jayne Harrelson. But the others are interesting as well. The image of Frances Farmer on the cross is a "Christa" or female Christ. The homoerotic images of Giotto and Van Heemskerck are also extremely interesting from a Gay and Lesbian perspective, as a comparitive. And then there is the really singular crucifixion by Schafelein - which, I suppose, might be anybody's guess!