Temple: Exhibition Statement

As a teenager raised within the marginal sect of Christianity called Jehovah’s Witnesses, I was somewhat embarrassed by the saccharine illustrations of the anticipated future earthly paradise promoted within the denomination’s literature. Paradise was rendered with a freshly mowed lawn, manicured bushes, and lions and tigers acting as headrests for middleclass-looking families with conservative haircuts--God’s new “Chosen People”. This paradise would be initiated once God had justifiably destroyed and rid the world of all non-Jehovah’s Witnesses.

With Temple, I wanted to play with this and other popular fantasies of spiritual paradise, whether based in heaven or here on Earth. The materials I have chosen are recognizable to most American suburban households--a lawn chair, animal statuettes, and fake grass. The nude figures in the video welcome the viewer with statements regularly encountered by consumers in a department store: “How may I help you today?” “Are you finding everything alright?”

It is not my intention to create a sarcastic critique. While I am no longer associated with any religious movement or ideology, I am still interested in whether humanity’s continued yearning for connection and meaning (what Freud labeled an “Oceanic Feeling”) begs for an updated manifestation. Perhaps what is needed is a new “spiritual” iconography that utilizes everyday manufactured items and materials to merge the concepts of sacred and profane rather than segregate them. Of course this idea is not original. For example, throughout the U.S., impromptu shrines of flowers and teddy bears spring up after the death of a child, relative or even a celebrity. In numerous cultures, shrines to dead relatives and friends frequently incorporate “kitsch” items to memorialize the departed. Cheap plastic gods, saints and idols can also be found in markets and dollar stores around the globe. In these examples, any material can be transformed into a temporal “sacred object”. It is this transient quality that interests me. With Temple, my goal was to instill or inject an air of significance into these normally mundane objects while creating a secular-sacred meditative space.