Was ist ein volk wert / (what is a people's worth that do not speak?)
(12x16 copy of original watercolor painting) printed on professional digital archival paper.
Images are from a collage from photographs I took while living in Dresden, Germany in 2005.
The german used:
- "Was ist ein volk wert das nicht spricht?" (What is a people's worth that do not speak?)
- "Unsere Mauer" means "our wall" (a overlapping reference to the berlin wall and the cross of Christ being used as a wall, barrier against LGBTQ people and the unjust burden of it that "non-affirming" christians place upon our backs to carry. Which is the complete opposite of the truth and freedom of the cross and what Jesus brings through his death and resurrection.
The painting references the struggle and fight of the LGBTQ Christian faith community and that we must stand up to the voices against us that tell us we aren't worthy. It shows the church's ongoing abuse of LGBTQ christians and the mental, physical, emotional burdens forced upon us - and the harmful and twisted theologies taught to us as children and passed down by parents. We are told to submit and carry such shame and self-hate throughout our whole lives- it's a never ending onslaught of what evangelical christians call "love the sinner, hate the sin" teaching - but it's fruit is poison and it only brings condemnation, fear, and self-loathing. Other images show a temple column with crying faces, and a soviet-era female worker flying a flag in protest that says "we actually are one" coming out of a pink triangle.
A pink triangle has been a symbol for the LGBTQ+ community, initially intended as a badge of shame, but later reclaimed as a positive symbol of self-identity and love for queerness. In Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, it began as one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, distinguishing those imprisoned because they had been identified by authorities as gay men. In the 1970s, it was revived as a symbol of protest against homophobia and for queer liberation, and has since been adopted by the larger LGBTQ+ community as a popular symbol of LGBTQ pride and the LGBTQ rights and queer liberation movements.
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