Martyrdom

by Nora Geist :: You need to be a member to contact artists →Join :: Portfolio

“Baring the cross” (1995). I reimagine the tradition of religious iconography through a provocatively erotic lens, collaging imagery from my earlier photographic narrative “Saintly Cadavers”. Drawing on the Byzantine and medieval Christian practice of venerating saints through symbolic, devotional art, I subvert the icon’s sacred purpose by merging ecstatic martyrdom with explicit carnality. Traditional icons mediate divine presence through stylised, ethereal forms, inviting contemplation of the transcendent. My icon, however, inverts this dynamic, grounding sanctity in the profane. The saints here are not ethereal beings but corporeal ones, their “martyrdom” a surrender to desire rather than a rejection of the flesh. The title “Baring the Cross” plays on dual meanings: the cross as a symbol of redemptive suffering, and the “baring” of the body as an act of liberation from clerical repression. I critiques the Church’s historical demonisation of sexuality and its idealisation of “incorruptible” saints—bodies preserved as relics of divine favour. By contrast, my subjects are animate, flawed, and unabashedly sexual, their vitality mocking the sterile piety of reliquary culture. The work challenges viewers to confront the hypocrisy of a theology that divorces spirituality from embodiment, suggesting that true holiness might reside in the raw, unmediated humanity the Church often condemns.“Martyrdom: Baring the Cross” is a heretical hagiography, redefining sainthood as a state of radical bodily honesty. My icon does not invoke the divine but interrogates it, demanding a theology that embraces, rather than negates, the erotic as a site of sacred revelation.