Marginalia

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06.12.2016

MARGINALIA #20

Héctor Jiménez Castillo
November 1, 2016 – November 30, 2016

Every month Marginalia invites an artist, curator or project to provide a series of images that will serve as the background of Terremoto, in relation to their practice and current interests. At the end of each month, the identity of our guest is revealed and the whole series of images is unveiled.

 

To read histories of saints is to read humanity and its desires, their mythical-fantastic tales cross with body discipline and the reality of pain inflicted by others and self-inflicted. To study at an extreme right school was to grow surrounded by images, contradictions and violence. I remember spending the last three years of basic school with the singular sensation of being doing evil all the time. My acts and thoughts would turn, almost instantly, into sins of all kind. I learned to confess myself every so often with the fear of an eleven-year-old that intends to earn his place in the kingdom of heaven. So my life would go down this way: I did evil, I thought I did it and then, then, I would regret it.

During that time, we would pray the rosary to the unison at the school patio, this would take place on October. The hour that the mechanically-repeated-verbosity lasted was worth when it came to the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary. My fervor (if memorizing the litany could be named so) elevated when hearing: Mother most pure. Mother most chaste. Mother without original sin. Virgin most prudent. Virgin most venerable. Virgin most faithful. Mirror of justice (pray for us). Seat of wisdom (pray for us). Cause of our joy (pray for them). Vessel of honor (pray for the others). Mystical rose (pray for you). Tower of David (pray for this). Tower of ivory (pray for that). House of gold (pray for not getting to power again). Ark of the Covenant (pray for pop). Comforter of the afflicted (pray for everyone)… Then, my eleven-year-old imagination would throw images so powerful, vivid and poetic that sometimes out of school I would recite to myself: Queen of angels (pray for us). Queen of patriarchs (pray for us). Queen of prophets (pray for us). Queen of apostles (pray for us).

I envied those saints, which would turn into an offense since envy is a sin.
I envied their superpowers and their clothes. They, the martyrs that had given their body to faith. Some had turn themselves in to the enemy with no condition, they put the other cheek and remove their shoes facing danger. I so desired that strength that would allow them to carry their heads among the arms after being cruelly beheaded. Severed and burned alive, they would smile with the greatest ecstasy because they knew their destiny: the kingdom of God. They, the virgins that had exchanged body for look; because if I’m certain of anything is that virgins are just look and affliction, that their body does not exist and they deserve a new one. At that moment, I was sure of something else, that not even their rich clothes or their superhuman powers would save me from the beatings my classmates gave me with noisy and worn-out synonyms of the word homosexual.

For this Marginalia, I’ve decide to make use of these images left by saints and the nun-teacher that gave the class on Ethics and (catholic) values to reaffirm my desires. I propose to utilize the given space as some kind of saints and martyrs calendar, specialized on them with images I’ve created from reading them, as a result of a specialized artistic process on the Vatican. Disciplined artists that explore sculpture, fashion, literature, and all derived hybrid posters that result from the histories of these divine heroes in churches, museums and markets.

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