麻豆社

Good Morning.

Peterborough Cathedral is currently hosting an exhibition that caught my attention.

The artist is Marc Bratcher and his work features images of the Virgin Mary and of Jesus of Nazareth. Nothing unexpected about a cathedral art exhibition featuring these two images.

However, here, Marc Bratcher collection is titled: 鈥淒isability and the Divine鈥�.

In this work, Mary is a mother with disabilities: whether as a mother in grief at the death of her son, or as a mother with a young infant.

Reading his artist鈥檚 statement I was struck by how he spoke about the purpose of his work: he鈥檚 not suggesting that the historical Mary was a wheelchair user, and he says that his work has nothing to do with political correctness.

One of the things he is interested in is representation.

Recently there鈥檚 been an upsurge in recognition of religious art that reflects ethnicity and multicultural perspectives.

But there are still questions in public life about the rights of people with disabilities to parent. Depicting a disabled Virgin Mary is a way of highlighting ongoing issues 鈥� sociological and theological 鈥� about bodies, autonomy, images of perfection and accessibility.

And Christianity can feed into those issues.

Years ago, I asked a Blind friend what he thought of phrases in Christian hymns like 鈥淚 once was blind but now I see鈥� or the multiple healing stories in the gospel traditions where a blind person is healed; stories that are often used as a way of depicting enlightenment

鈥淢y blindness isn鈥檛 a metaphor for ignorance鈥� my friend said.

His words, too, had sociological, linguistic and theological critique at their core. It made me think - How often do I use the shorthand of disability as a way of conveying ignorance, shortcoming, fear, unavailability or stubbornness?

Speaking about the disabled Virgin Mary in his exhibition, Marc Bratcher, a disabled artist himself, asks 鈥渋s it not possible to be both a unique symbol of immaculacy and human perfection whilst still being physically different?鈥�

By paying such vivid attention to the body, Marc Bratcher, also speaks about the limitations of every single body. In the face of Empire, Mary held the body of her dead son. Paying attention to the body is to pay attention to other things too: the desire for better powers, the desire for transcendence.

Marc Bratcher doesn鈥檛 describe himself as religious: he says he鈥檚 more a respecter of religion than a devout believer. What strikes me is that his work amplifies one of the things art can do: it queries, it asks for the double-take, it re-sets the ground, reframing and disrupting and inviting.

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