Connecticut Church's new Stations of the Cross shows Iraq suffering

[Alpharetta]

http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:112928

Stations of Modern Persecution

Artist Gwyenth Leech models her Stations of the Cross on contemporary suffering in Iraq and around the world

by LuAnne Roy - May 26, 2005


Gwyneth Leech said she did not set out to make a political statement when she painted her Stations of the Cross for St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Norwalk. Yet her contemporary portrayal, which includes images of soldiers, machine guns and barbed wire, juxtaposed with traditional biblical scenes, has garnered a lot of attention--and not all of it favorable. What troubles people most when they first view her Stations of the Cross is not the guns and soldiers, but the contemporary setting--the fact that the paintings aren't idealized biblical figures, she said.

Leech replaced the biblical figures with images of humiliated prisoners detained in U.S. prison camps in Iraq and Guantanamo, Cuba; with images of distraught mothers around the globe--mothers who've lost sons in the war, Iraqi mothers whose sons are detained in prison camps and mothers who saw their children gunned down in Beslan, Russia. These were the images that came to Leech's mind after months of studying crucifixion iconography in art museums. The deluge of grief that Leech said surrounded her when she was first commissioned by St. Paul's to do the work in the spring of 2004.

"The humiliation of being stripped it's the same as the crucifixion," said Leech, describing photographs she saw of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. It was then that it dawned on her that those were the images she would use to bring immediacy to the traditional Stations of the Cross.

The result was a set of 14 paintings, each of which is modeled after a traditional image of Christ's journey to the crucifixion. Leech's Stations reference each step of Christ's journey--from His being falsely arrested to His being nailed to the cross, complete with all the biblical figures he encounters along his route. The first station, which portrays Jesus' judgment before Pontius Pilate, shows Jesus (who's clad in a course red robe symbolizing the traditional attire for a Muslim man) standing between two soldiers wearing green army fatigues (which Leech says she modeled after photos of soldiers at the detention camps at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay). The central scene is encircled with barbed wire, while an angry, faceless mob presses around the fenced off area.


Jesus stands unjustly accused before Pontius Pilate, while an angry mob presses from behind a barbed wire fence.


Two modern soldiers stand guard as Jesus struggles to take up the cross.


Jesus stands stripped of his garments while modern soldiers threaten him with vicious dogs, a direct reference to Abu Ghraib.


Mary (portrayed as an Iraqi peasant woman) holds the body of her son Jesus after he’s taken off the cross.

Remainder of article at
http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:112928

[cry baby]

1. very powerful images!

[Burried News]

2. Google Palestinian Hanging or Dilawar or Monstering

Physiologically death from this is basically the same as crucifixion- you suffocate from lack of ventilation.

[Sparkman]

3. The religious theme can't be more vital in the exposure of Iraq's reality.

Moral decay in government is historical as well as contemporary.
When will the pendulum return?

[Kerrytravelers]

4. As a Catholic, I find it very appropriate.

Christ is one with us in our suffering. To place his suffering among pain that we've caused should make anyone, Catholic or not, to stand back and think about what we are doing... we, who claim to be so behind this "man of faith", we, who claim to be this "great nation who carry with us deep moral, Christian values" ... what else could better capture our hypocrisy.

I say all the above, of course, recognizing that there is a very large portion of America who either do not identify themselves as Christians and/or who take the Seperation of Church and State very seriously.

[Mythsaje]

11. As a non-Christian

I have to say that it would suit me just fine if some of these "Fine, upstanding Christians" who claim to be our leaders, would actually walk their talk.

Enough with the Old Testament Christianity already...we want to hear Sermon on the Mount type Christianity. You know--the following Christ kind of Christianity. The BEING like Christ kinda of Christianity--the kind that says, that's for God to sort out, not Man.

There ARE some things for man to sort out, but I think we're concentrating on the wrong ones, personally.

[CatholicEdHead]

5. Very powerful and relvant to our times

[ElsewheresDaughter]

6. also as a catholic i find it very appropriate....

[Viva_La_Revolution]

7. just KICK

great messages.

[DanCa]

8. Thank you for posting this

Jesus, my Jesus, was definetly not pro war, anti gay, or anti women

[DemBones DemBones]

9. I'm another Catholic who finds the images very moving.

I'd like to echo what Kerrytravelers said above:

"Christ is one with us in our suffering. To place his suffering among pain that we've caused should make anyone, Catholic or not, to stand back and think about what we are doing... we, who claim to be so behind this "man of faith", we, who claim to be this "great nation who carry with us deep moral, Christian values" ... what else could better capture our hypocrisy."

Kerrytravelers went on to qualify that not everyone would agree with the above statement and that s/he (Kerrytravelers) of course believes in separation of church and state.

I'd like to think anyone, whether theist or atheist could agree with all of what Kerrytravelers said in the above quote. Atheists, and some theists, would not agree that 'Christ is one with us in our suffering' but could understand and agree that this is the viewpoint of all or most Christians and thus the rest follows from it. American Christians should see how wrong what our country is doing in Iraq really is, and should demand an end to it.

These images are effective protest art as well as effectively representing the Stations of Christ in modern imagery.

[meganmonkey]

10. Wow - VERY powerful

especially considering the 'faithful' that this kind of thinking is up against.

I think we all know what Jesus would think about the state of things right now.

It's a shame the rest of the country doesn't recognize that.

[Peace Patriot]

12. Wow! What a terrific post! Thank you, Alpharetta!

Humanistic values--which inherently include sympathy for the suffering of others--are universal. They are quite beautifully expressed in the New Testament, and in the life and teachings of Jesus--and have been found to be the core teaching of all major religions and the core values of all progressive and enlightened societies. (Aldous Huxley wrote a book about this, called "The Perennial Philosophy.") These fundamental humanistic values are by no means exclusive to Christianity.

As a liberated Catholic (love Jesus, love people getting together and breaking bread; think the Church veered off from Jesus in the Fifth Century A.D. when "Saint" Cyril of Alexandria ordered the death by skinning alive of the Neo-Platonic philosopher Hypatia and destroyed the Library at which she had been a most brilliant teacher and civic leader--a teacher of bishops! --the Church involved in fetishistic guilt ever since; "Saint" Cyril, "patriarch" of Alexandria, now revered as a "Father of the Church"--what rot!), I think that this modernization of the "Passion of Christ" is more than appropriate--it is a stunning insight into WHAT'S WRONG with everybody, with our country, with our priorities, with our leaders, with those who are in pain because of the callousness and murderousness and hypocrisy of our leaders, with our voting system which doesn't reflect the peacefulness, tolerance and generosity of the majority of people, with the garbage and lies coming out of our TV sets and printed in our newspapers, with our relationships with other people in the world, and with the failure of all our laws, and the assault on all of our humanistic ideals.

At the heart of it is the ability to inflict pain from a distance and not see the consequences in the suffering of others.

This artist brings it up close. For that she deserves the Nobel Prize for Peace.