A conversation with Alejandro
How are the elements of the religious enemy portrayed in your Works? I mean, the naked nun?
Starting the question with the idea of a religious enemy already implies a predisposition to understand my art as a war. It's not good to put it that way. It is not like this. The question needs to be rephrased in another way. The Naked Nun refers to the title of the work: "Our Lady of the Forbidden Desire", which is part of the series Our Ladies of the Stau Quo, which is a series that in itself shows a paradox. They are idealized women but they collaborate with the status quo, that is, with the prevailing/conservative order.
The underlying idea is that patriarchy is also maintained with the collaboration of a certain type of woman.
The image of the nude nun from the waist down symbolizes a double message: on the one hand she exists as a sexually attractive being but at the same time her upper part - her conscience - is dressed in religious clothing, that is, concomitant with the status quo and mostly repressed.
She can offer herself as a sexual being but her head, her mentality, is covered by religious clothes, because although she is not religious, the prevailing culture is tinged with religious elements.
In other words, this paradox expresses the religious ban on women (see the issue in the Islamic world, which is the same now as it was in Christianity a century or two ago), the ban on freely exercising their sexuality and independence. She is born in splendor and has a cohort of dancers below her, as if they were nymphs, but she is subject to the prevailing order. That is why the painting has two versions: ´The birth of Venus in the midst of the inquisition´ and the 2nd version ´Venus and the trial of Eva´.
What is wanted to convey is the disagreement about the role of women for the church and the indiscriminate repression exerted on dissident thought during the inquisition, (it is important to refer to the true and original meaning of the word heretic, which simply means "the that thinks differently” and that there is nothing sacrilegious about it, it simply exercises its right to think differently).
The Inquisition for me is the perfect metaphor for the oppression exercised by the church for a thousand years, since the inquisition does not appear in 1478 in Spain, which is when the Spanish inquisition was founded, but it appears in Languedoc France around 1134 to repress libertarian forms of Christianity such as the Albigensians who curiously promoted free love (this topic is very well treated in Umberto Eco's novel "The Name of the Rose"). It is still an interesting fact that the first news of Kabbalistic knowledge are from the same area and the same time.
The inquisition is dissolved in the nineteenth century, around 1834, but the repressive activity of the Church continues always close to power. The church has been systematically questioned over the centuries for issues of corruption. In fact the church in the twelfth century is divided and there are two Popes, one in Rome and another in Avignon who ignores the authority of the Pope of Rome.
The naked nun is a criticism of the constant repression and control that the church has exercised over men, but more so over women and sexuality in general. Most of the processes of burning witches are repression of women who had knowledge considered pagan by the church but who were ultimately women trying to be free from the power of the church.
Along the same lines, in several of my paintings a reproduction of Inocencio X appears, which would fulfill several functions. It testifies to my infinite admiration for Velázquez, but it is also a symbol of the corruption of the papacy.
Why is there a figure of Shiva holding God? How should this be interpreted?
This is part of what my conception of the universe is.
Refers to esoteric conceptions.
At the origin of religions there is always an esoteric knowledge that is transmitted only to initiates. In the case of Christianity, the apostles were the initiates of a secret knowledge that Jesus, as a teacher, imparted. There is tons of literature on this, it's not my invention.
It should not be forgotten that religion itself is born with the death of the guide, because while the guide or teacher is alive, what he transmits is a doctrine or knowledge. Religion was born to replace the figure of the original teacher, who interestingly is always contrary to the forms of religion prevailing at the time.
This means very clearly, and it should be very clear, that my critical gaze does not go against the figure of Jesus or towards his doctrine, but to the subsequent distortion of his word by the bureaucratic apparatus of the church. And above all towards the concept of absolute monotheism, the idea of a single truth, and the tendentious use of the crucifixion. The choice of the image of Jesus crucified is established by the church because the primitive Christians, the first Christians identified each other with the symbol of the fish.