Process 2.6 Post-Crit

After Katerie mentioned St. Cecilia in regards to our piece, I did some research, and lo and behold there was certainly and unwitting visual parallel with the intended interaction and subsequent gaze upon the interacter and this apparently iconic image os the martyred St. Cecilia.

Apparently the story goes mainly as such that she wanted to remain a virgin, but was getting married, so she asked God for her to be able to remain pure. Fast forward to yes she's still a virgin, married, and her and her husband are big proponents of Christianity, even though they're in Roman society.

Then fast forward to she's marked to get killed because she's Christian. Apparently they tried to suffocate her by steaming her in her bathroom... and then because that didn't work they decided to behead her (that escalated quickly). But, they done goofed and didn't actually completely behead her and she had to lay dying for three days. So in those days she never lost her faith and donated to the poor and did all the good things martyrs would do. All in all some said that she was the first "uncorrupted" saint.

Now, back to our project. I think this is pretty interesting. Not that we were going for a religious aspect at all, but thinking about how this story is centered around 'purity' (virgin purity, purity in your beliefs and morals, not letting anything taint said purities), and also it seems around innocence. Just the mere act of her asking to keep her virginity gives the immediate impression of innocence being a big part of herself.

And as touched upon previously in a post before the crit, some of the topics that were related to our project was innocence and the white in the installation as clean, pure, comforting, and non-threatening. You can see these descriptive words reflected even in the way that the saint is sculpted; perhaps not comforting so much, but the others certainly. Unless it was your belief that you found comfort in knowing that she was martyred as a proponent for your faith.

It was a little uncanny to me to see the visual parallel in the gesture and setup of this with our piece after looking it up. Even though the saint was obviously placing emphasis on the act of being martyred. But aesthetically speaking, especially how the second image was shot was interesting. Maybe if I were more religious I would explore this icon in a further project, as I do find it an interesting and striking image that's loaded with ideas of, to name a few: sacrifice, submission of women, dynamic of power, and fortitude.