Diversity in Religious Art

Speaker 1: Roots, Race and Culture is made possible in part by the contributions to PBS, Utah from listeners like you. Thank you. Danor Gerald: Hey everybody, you're listening to Roots, Race and Culture, a new podcast from PBS, Utah. Lonzo Liggins: If you like what you hear, we hope you'll subscribe, leave us a review and share with your friends. Danor Gerald: All right, now let's get this thing started. Lonzo Liggins: Hey everyone, and welcome to Roots, Race and Culture, a new show on PBS, Utah, where we bring you into candid conversations about shared cultural experiences. My name is Lonzo Liggins. Danor Gerald: And I'm Danor Gerald. Today, we're going to discuss how diversity or the lack thereof in religious art impacts our lives, our culture, and our very understanding of humanity. Lonzo Liggins: Wow. Danor Gerald: It'll be a great show. Lonzo Liggins: Yeah, man. It's going to be really awesome. We've got two wonderful guests here today. To my left here is Laura Hurtado. Laura, would you introduce yourself? Laura Hurtado: Yeah, I'm the executive director of the Utah Museum Contemporary art. Awesome. Danor Gerald: Wow. That is a nice title. I'm excited to hear what you got to say. Lonzo Liggins: Fancy. Danor Gerald: Bringing out the big guns today. All right. And to our right, Melissa, please introduce yourself. Melissa Tshikamba: I'm Melissa Tshikamba, and I'm a fine artist. And I graduated with bachelor of fine arts from BYU. Lonzo Liggins: She has some amazing art, I'm excited to see that today. Danor Gerald: Yes. Lonzo Liggins: It's actually a really exciting show. We're be able to see some neat things and talk about some cool things. But first let's talk about some historical stuff. Danor Gerald: Yeah. And put a perspective on this thing. Lonzo Liggins: Let's start with you, Laura. I mean, I wanted to hear about some of these key points when we're analyzing some of the historical perspectives in religious art. Can you break that down for us? Laura Hurtado: Yeah. Well, I guess you want to narrow the question a little bit, because I think within the realm of what we're talking about is really the historical perspective of Christian art. There's lots of religious art out there, and I think so much of our understanding of Christian art comes from a Euro-Western European tradition, and that has inherently a cultural bias and even a racial bias on how the work was constructed and who constructed it and who authored it. And that bias has implications in which it writes people into history or it writes people out. Lonzo Liggins: What's funny is that because I grew up Christian, right? And up until probably about my mid twenties, when I would pray, I would envision a white guy. I'd envision the sort of carpenter looking guy with a beard, The Passion Of Christ guy, that's who I envisioned. And I had to wake up and be like, "wait, hold on. Is this the guy that I'm envisioning? Is that actually how he looks? Or is that just, in our little Western hemisphere is how we view that?" Danor Gerald: Well, I wonder about that sometimes. I wonder if imperialism or colonization had an impact on this, because for example, we have an image of a Christ, that's very much like what you are describing, a very Romanesque looking image of Christ and you look at his nose and skin color. And to me... Lonzo Liggins: That's the guy that I saw when I prayed. Danor Gerald: That does not show a Middle-Eastern person, right? And so maybe that's a little bit about what you're talking about. Laura Hurtado: Yeah. I think that there's inherently in how images were made, reflects the sort of colonial or imperialist practice and who was creating them or who was authorized to make work. Who were the decision makers? Who were the patrons? Who had the money? Who had the influence? All of those sort of socioeconomic structures were at play in terms of creating those images. And Lonzo, you and I were talking about an artwork where Christian Jankowski's piece, it's a video piece called Casting Jesus, where it's a Vatican art critic and a Vatican priest, and they're sort of auditioning the role of Christ for a work of art. And ultimately the person they choose is a Florentine. And they're like, "oh, this Florentine looks like a [girorunin]," which is a painting. What they had in mind was not like, "oh, he looks Middle-Eastern," or "this looks true to the historic fact." In their minds, they were praying to Italian Renaissance paintings or depictions of that. Danor Gerald: I would love to hear your perspective on this, Melissa. Lonzo Liggins: Melissa's changing it, she's like, "We're going to change this. We're going to make this different." Melissa Tshikamba: Fine. Danor Gerald: Give us your opinion about this whole history. Melissa Tshikamba: Yeah. I agree with Laura. I think we do have a very limited idea of what Christ look looks like of what God looks like. And it is based off of this colonial mindset that we have, and it's been passed down generation after generation. Danor Gerald: And one of the things that I've heard a lot in conversations among black people is that we have to decolonize our minds, right? Because that artwork is so powerful. We have one more image, a historical image of Christ, so this is him going into Jerusalem and there are more people in the artwork, right? So you would think, "okay, this is the middle east and you have Christ, but then there's, I think one person who has olive skin color in this image, in fact, there's a blonde baby there and the apostles," and it's another example of, "Is this an accurate description of what these people really look like, and does that matter?" And that's the question I really want you to say, does it matter what that artwork that we see looks like? How does that impact us? Melissa Tshikamba: Well, it totally matters because... I grew up with a religious background as well. Lonzo Liggins: What's your religious background? Melissa Tshikamba: I'm LDS. So growing up as a child, I saw these images factual and no one corrected them. So growing up in, "okay, this is how it is, and this is what it is. And I'm going to believe whoever's telling me this, because they know more and they're above me." So I'm growing up thinking and all these people are white and God's white. And if God's white, that means when I go to heaven... Or to be more like God, I need to be closer to whiteness. And it didn't leave any room for my culture or other people's culture because it's saying only this ethnicity or this religion... Danor Gerald: Has God in them. Melissa Tshikamba: Yeah. Has God in them and it doesn't lead... You can't see the divinity within yourself. Danor Gerald: Right. Lonzo Liggins: Here's what I want to know.... No, go ahead. I'm sorry, Laura. Laura Hurtado: I want to jump in there because I think there's certain images that if you saw a Warhol or I don't know, a Rembrandt painting or whatever, I don't think you would have that same, they wouldn't have that same authority. And I think when you have religious images, you bring that believing gaze to it. So they have a certain weight to them where you're not interrogating them in the same kind of way you do with other images. And that believing gaze has a certain kind of authority to it where you internalize it, where it becomes like, "oh, this is who this person is." Melissa Tshikamba: Yeah, it's an emotional impact. Laura Hurtado: Yeah, it's huge. And it starts as a child, having an image held up and saying, "this is who this person is." And you internalize that bias in a really profound and deep way. Lonzo Liggins: Well, what I look at in particular, the Mormon religion, it seems like their images are extra European and extra white. And it seems like they go out of their way to really stamp that image in. And it makes me wonder what we know now about history and what we know now about archeology. And what we've discovered is that there's actually people that didn't look like that in Jesus' time. And they look completely different. Why then, knowing what we know now and knowing that these people probably didn't like that, do we hold onto these images? Danor Gerald: Well, that brings me to another question I was going to ask you ladies, does commerce play a part in this, right? Lonzo Liggins: Is it tradition? Danor Gerald: Well, tradition, but also what's going to make the most money, right? Does that have anything to do with this? Melissa Tshikamba: Yeah. Laura Hurtado: I think commerce, and again, that bias that exists, that you buy into or that you are maybe more accurately, that you are sold. So that becomes part of like, "Oh, if this is what you believe is true, then that's what is replicated, it's true." Danor Gerald: Right. And that's where you're going to say, "Oh, I want to buy that because that reminds me of my childhood, the images I saw, or what I believe based on the artwork that I've seen." And that's kind of interesting. Now, Melissa has flipped the script for us. Lonzo Liggins: You may imagined it. And I love it too. Danor Gerald: Yes. You're giving many people an opportunity to make that connection. And we had an episode on colorism. How does that impact you in terms of what you experienced in your training or anything like that? Melissa Tshikamba: I think colorism is one of the results of colonization, and the past always affects the future. So back then, the lighter skin you were, the closer to God you were because the closer to whiteness you were. And so even with me growing up, I would get compliments like, "Oh, you're prettier for a black girl, because you have a lighter skin complexion." Whereas the... Lonzo Liggins: Yeah, that was, yeah. Danor Gerald: Now, then when you looked at artwork though, how did you feel? Did you feel like that you need to find some way to change that narrative because...? Melissa Tshikamba: Oh, for sure. Lonzo Liggins: What inspired this? What inspired you to start saying, "You know what? I'm going to start creating these images that look different." Melissa Tshikamba: When I started to learn more history and I started to practice more self-love, I'm like, "Why do I think that I need to be white in order to go to heaven?" "Why do I think I need to be white to be successful or closer to whiteness?" And I noticed a lot of my friends had that same problem. They wanted to marry a white guy. They wouldn't wear their natural hair if they were black, because it wasn't appropriate or acceptable. Danor Gerald: They wouldn't need it to success or something. Melissa Tshikamba: Yeah. Lonzo Liggins: It wasn't the standard of beauty. Melissa Tshikamba: It wasn't the standard of beauty. Lonzo Liggins: Right, right. Melissa Tshikamba: And whiteness was the standard of beauty. And I'm like, "that's not true." I knew that wasn't true. And I knew that images have a profound effect on the way you view yourself. Lonzo Liggins: Images have an amazing effect. It's billion, multi trillion dollar industry of advertising that we live in, where we're constantly being bombarded with images. And why would we not think that religious images don't have an impact either? Go ahead, I'm sorry. Melissa Tshikamba: Yeah. And our brains work on subconscious archetypal programming. So anytime we see an image, we associate that image with our... I'm trying to say this in the right way. We're associating, when we see an image, we try to internalize it and see ourselves in that image. And if we're being bombarded with the same images or negative propaganda about yourself, your skin color, over time, you are going to have self-hate or self-loathing for your culture. Danor Gerald: That actually makes me think of the comment you made earlier about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's a global church. In fact, demographically, there are more people living outside the United States than inside the United States now. Do you feel like the artwork, the media is representative of that in the church? Is there progress being made? Melissa Tshikamba: No. Danor Gerald: No. Melissa Tshikamba: Not at all. I think they're trying to make a little bit of progress, but I feel like you can't have just a toe in, it's either, you're all in, or you're not. Because if you're propagating that you're a worldwide religion, you need to show the world in your artwork, and we need to be better at that. Danor Gerald: They are coming out with a new hymn book that actually includes music from all over the world. And it's been a long time coming, but it's on the way. Melissa Tshikamba: Which is exiting. Danor Gerald: And I think that's a step forward. Melissa Tshikamba: It's a step in the right direction. Danor Gerald: Because the music can be pretty sleepy. Melissa Tshikamba: I know, it can be. And that's a Eurocentric cultural tradition, the soft music. And you can only feel the spirit if it's calm. Danor Gerald: Right, relating that to piety. Melissa Tshikamba: That's one culture. There's so many different cultures who celebrate God in so many different ways and feel the spirit in different ways, that we can't just have one. So it is a great step in the right direction. Danor Gerald: Oh yeah, and this is something with that calm stuff. Lonzo Liggins: I wouldn't know about that. Laura Hurtado: I think Some of the ubiquitousness that comes from Mormon image making is a result of correlation, which was a kind of standardization of images and of churches that happens in the 1980s. That limited the amount of, this is the images you can have in a church to a set kind of gospel library. And that had for sure whether intended or not a colonizing effect. There's a series of papers that have been done on research on it, where you have depictions of the international church from all around the world. And yet they have the same sort of standard like Harry Anderson kind of images and the background. And what does that kind of exportation of, it's not just whiteness, but it's a singular whiteness, as defined by a set of 30 images or as defined by a series of a handful of male and pale artists. Danor Gerald: But I can tell you this from an insider's perspective, they are doing quite a bit of research and doing a lot of work. Lonzo Liggins: Who? Danor Gerald: The LDS church. The church is casually said ... Lonzo Liggins: I'm the only non LDS person up here. Danor Gerald: Well, I'm just telling you, because I've been in a lot of media. I've played a wise man in their nativity videos and things like that. And I've spoken to people who are doing research across the globe with members of the church and they are working to correct that representation and make it feel a little more inclusive. So there is work to be done, but it is putting their feet forward to do that. Lonzo Liggins: It definitely needs to happen because it's something that's long overdue. I think a lot of churches need to be a little bit more inclusive when it comes to the images that they're using because many of their members are non-white. Around the world they members that are non-white. Danor Gerald: Right, of course. Lonzo Liggins: And their children are seeing this and it reminds me, are you creating a children's book? Are you doing some of that work with some of the image that you have? Because you did some stuff that's non-male as well, correct? Danor Gerald: Right. I'm I'm curious about diversity in art, religious or non-religious is in terms of women, representation of women. Melissa Tshikamba: I like to explore the divine feminine and what that means. And I think as I started to practice self-love more and decolonize my mindset. And I want all women to feel that they are seen and that they're important, that they are divine, because they're not often represented in Christian art. And it's a problem. There's a lot of self loathing, I've noticed, especially with darker women in all cultures. And I just want to change the narrative. Lonzo Liggins: We'll get back to this conversation on Roots, Race and Culture in just a moment. Speaker 6: PBS, Utah is also home to other dynamic podcasts. More than Half covers some of the most challenging issues facing women in Utah and how it takes all of us to make change happen. Here's a clip from the episode, A Separate Space. Speaker 7: I don't think a lot of people realize that it's just not common for people of color, especially women of color, to see themselves in the stories that we're reading. Speaker 6: Subscribe to More Than Half wherever you get your podcast. Danor Gerald: And now back to Roots, Race and Culture from PBS, Utah. We see things of sort of looks like an Eve image, a nativity, black nativity, these kind of images, what does that speak to you, Laura, when you see this kind of representation of the female? Laura Hurtado: Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things I've been thinking about, there's this famous image by an artist named Catherine Opie called Self-portrait Nursing and she's a queer woman and the background is drawing on a Madonna kind of stereotype, stereotypical Madonna imagery. And I think what she's trying to do is to say, "I have a space here. I am allowed to exist here." And I think Melissa, you're doing something very similar, which is to say, "I exist here and I'm allowed to be seen." And that there is something at stake by making me invisible and by making my experience invisible. Melissa Tshikamba: Yeah. And I think... Danor Gerald: Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. Melissa Tshikamba: Oh, no, you're right. And I feel like now, especially more than ever, women who are artists can tell their own stories, where historically it was usually white male artists who were painting these cultures or these experiences that were not their experiences. And so I think we can paint our own experiences and have it come from a direct source. Danor Gerald: I have to say, I feel like in any spiritual oriented artwork, it is probably more important to show inclusivity in that artistic space for me than any other, because you want everyone on this planet to feel like they can connect with God. Melissa Tshikamba: Yeah, you want everyone to feel that they have divinity within themselves and they don't need to change themselves to one ethnicity or one culture in order to be accepted. Danor Gerald: Yeah, it's a powerful and important message. Lonzo Liggins: It could turn people away. With me, it turned me away a lot. And it makes people not want to be a part of a religion because they don't feel like they're accepted. If they can't see something that they feel like they can connect to, they feel like, "well, this is just a religion for a specific race. It's not a religion for everyone because I don't look like these people." So why would I be attracted to that religion at all? I know that's what happened with me. I mean, The Museum of Contemporary Art, do you guys do stuff that kind of highlights these type of art artworks? Laura Hurtado: I mean, we don't show religious art as that's not one of our objectives, but we do have a show up right now by a South Carolinian artist named Charles Edward Williams called Black River. And he is exploring religion and race within his exhibition. Danor Gerald: Is this at the museum now? Laura Hurtado: It's at the museum now, yeah. Danor Gerald: Great. Laura Hurtado: And he's looking at the notion of radical forgiveness. Danor Gerald: I love that. Laura Hurtado: I think it's a really powerful show. And I think when you can step out of those sort of loaded biases or outside of those colonial lenses that really have profound damage and profound impacts to who is allowed to speak, and how they're allowed to speak or who is allowed to be seen, that there can be something really powerful. Danor Gerald: I love that. I absolutely love that. Laura Hurtado: Yeah. And I think it goes back to that feminist saying that you can't be what you can't see. And I really like that, I think it's really powerful. On one hand it's reductive because Melissa hadn't seen these images and she said, "I'm going to be seen," and I think there's something really powerful and it's been that. Melissa Tshikamba: And it has a huge impact on children. The first thing they're reading and looking at, they internalize things as fact in what they're taught. And there's this experiment, I don't know if you guys are familiar with it, but Dr. Kenneth Clark conducted this experiment in the 1940s with African-American children's self-perceptions when it comes to race, and ethnicity. And they had a white doll and a black doll, and they had a black child and a white child look at the doll and they ask these questions, "What doll is pretty, what doll is going to be successful? What doll is more valuable?" Danor Gerald: I'm pretty sure we all know who answers. Melissa Tshikamba: The children answered the question. Lonzo Liggins: We got a treat for you guys, because I want to hear more about that when you get back. Danor Gerald: I love that idea, radical forgiveness. In the fine art world, you hear amazing words like that. But I just want to thank you ladies for joining us today. Lonzo Liggins: Yes, thank you so much. Amazing work. Danor Gerald: Thank you, Melissa, your work is phenomenal. Lonzo Liggins: Where can we find it? Melissa Tshikamba: You can find it on my website, Instagram or Twitter. I just think it's important to tell everyone's stories, like you said, and represent everybody in our narrative, because we're not above each other. Danor Gerald: Thank you. Yes. And Laura, tell us if we want to go to see this amazing exhibit, how do we find it? Laura Hurtado: It's at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, which is located Downtown in between the Salt Palace and Abravanel Hall across the street from Nordstrom's, just Downtown. Danor Gerald: Thank you so much for joining us. Laura Hurtado: Thanks. Danor Gerald: Nordstrom's is awesome. Laura Hurtado: Yeah, sorry for the product placement there. Lonzo Liggins: All right, that's going to do it for this episode of Roots, Race and Culture. Danor Gerald: Check out our website for even more content, including interviews with some pretty dope BIPOC business owners. You can find all that and a bag of chips at PBSutah.org/routes. Lonzo Liggins: And you'd be doing us a solid if you told all your friends about our show, but until next time y'all, we are out.