Our Bodies Are

Our Bodes Are contains my struggle with Gnosticism, which sees the body as an evil trap for our souls. Originally the heresy of Gnosticism within the Christian faith denied that Jesus was fully human, that He came in the flesh. These pieces represent the tendency of myself and my peers to use Gnosticism as a means of excusing and coping with objectification, sexual abuse, and bodily insecurities. And yet, we have been given bodies not only to exist in but to bear the image of God, as God told us in Genesis 1:26. Image bearers and yet broken vessels increasingly vulnerable both physically and sexually. These pieces reflect and challenge both my own and the church’s understanding of femininity, traditional Christian iconography, and their influence on contemporary Christian female sexuality.