Tender Feelings is a reflection on my personal relationship with Jesus Christ during my formative years and its correlation to the tenets of Christianity. Drawn to the uncovered physical representation of Christ, I experienced a sense of acceptance and unconditional love through my consistent communion with Him, established through prayer and commonplace conversation. Yet, paradoxically, I also felt a judgment and marginalization imposed by his family, represented by God and the institutional church, labeling me as deviant and sentencing me to an eternity of suffering. Christianity is, unfortunately, frequently employed as a tool for manipulation — an apparatus for subjugation — wielded by those desiring to perpetuate the dominant values of a hetero-patriarchal society. Tender Feelings thus serves as an endeavor to counter this intense oppression.

 

Using archival photographs, childhood mementos, projections of baroque paintings, pornographic stills, and doll cutouts (many from earlier work, The Temptation of St. Baz), I create stage-like dioramas to satirically and playfully invoke the theater of shame, pain, and sacrifice and revisit my performance of disidentification as a young queer person.