The artist Marina Carreira wrote the following exhibition proposal to Artfront Galleries.
“The Divine Feminist” explores the reclamation of [Judeo-Christian] faith by centering spirituality and religious ideology around a female/non-binary deity. Like most (pre)historic matriarchal religions and cults, the worship of a non-male God allowed for a centering of artistic and moral narrative where sex is empowering, femininity is aligned with strength and ferocity, and intelligence, empathy, and compassion are chosen weapons of mass creation/destruction. Through multimedia techniques that include paint, collage, text, and found objects, Carreira dares us to challenge patriarchal notions of pleasure, salvation and redemption through works that embrace (cis and trans) “Woman as God” while exploring a female-bodied/identifying, queer, revolutionary, sex-positive, maternal and dissenting dogma that teaches that no human is illegal, black and brown lives matter, consent is key, and love is love.”
We got excited about her work and about her idea for a show, and asked her if she would be so kind as let us do a group show with herself and a number of artists using her title of “The Divine Feminist”. She graciously agreed. We opened up the idea to our artists and received work in dialog with many traditions, very ancient goddesses and less ancient Greek deities, Judaism, Catholicism, Hinduism, the #metoo movement and on to honoring our divine bodies themselves.
This exhibition could expand forever, but we’ve given the dialog a start. Do look carefully.
Image Ancient Goddess by Janet Morgan, Curator