All hail Parton! A transgendered glowing deity sings ‘I Will Always Love You,’ dominating an entire wall of Truck
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In his current exhibition, “The Neon God We Made,” local queer artist Mr. and Mrs. Keith Murray transforms Truck — ordinarily a white cube gallery space — into a neon, rave-like love shrine. The black walls encase flashing neon lights, animated sculptures and videos, all of which portray queer iconography and radical ideas surrounding religion, spirituality and God.
“Most people believe that God made us in his image,” says Murray, “but I think we make God in our image.” He says the only way people are able to describe inexplicable phenomena like infinity and God is by projecting what one knows based on their social and cultural backgrounds. As a result, many Christians project a wrathful God, one who is intolerant of gender variance and unorthodox sexual practices.
Murray’s personal philosophy involves reclaiming sexuality as divine, as well as reaching an equilibrium of masculine and feminine energies in one’s self. In August 2008, Murray travelled to Las Vegas and married himself at the Erotic Heritage Museum. In an outfit that split his male and female self right down the centre, Murray vowed to forever love himself as a proclamation of inner peace. Through this peace, he could spread his love for people on a broader scale.
In The Dolly Shot, Murray cleverly references Michael Snow’s groundbreaking 1967 experimental film, Wavelength. Shot on a dolly, Snow’s 45-minute film begins on the widest setting of a zoom lens and ends at its shortest. While the zoom is perceived to be continuous, it is actually intermittent. While Murray’s video is also shot with a dolly (it begins with the shortest zoom and expands to the widest), he adds another layer of witticism by emulating Dolly Parton. To many a gay man, Parton is considered a goddess. Murray, however, actually portrays her as God, while lip-synching in the nude to “I Will Always Love you.” The projected video has an ethereal quality that Murray achieved by painting his entire body as a colour negative and using the invert effect on a digital video camera. As the camera zooms out, it becomes apparent that the Dolly Parton impersonator, or God as some may know her/him, has both male and female parts.
In Revelations 1:13, the Bible describes Christ appearing with a golden girdle about his paps. Translated from Hebrew, paps means “female breast.” While there has been some debate around Christ’s mammary/chest area, the interpretation of the Bible describing Christ as a transgendered deity allows the viewer to consider how ancient texts have changed and may have been misinterpreted (especially in regards to homosexual activity).
The image of the trans-Christ appears throughout the exhibition. In an animated drawing that flashes through the colour spectrum, when each colour flashes, it eliminates that same colour on the drawing and creates the illusion of animation. Similar to the drawing, there is a spinning wheel with small three-dimensional, rainbow-coloured figures lined up. As the wheel spins, a strobe light flashes, animating the initially male figure, who sprouts breasts, gives birth and dies. The baby then starts the life cycle all over again.
In a heavy reference to gay male culture, The Shut Up Off is a psychedelic video of two bespectacled men, Peter Morgan and Ryan Scott, repeating the words “shut up” to one another in a theatre exercise called the Meisner Technique. As the exercise evolves through the repetition of “shut up,” the character relationships oscillate between anger and affection. This video illustrates the complexity of human relationships as well as the human ability to surpass the spoken word and absorb subtext and deeper meaning.
Murray’s work is critical of Catholicism and Christianity, the two prevailing religions and ways of thinking in western culture. The notion that God is vengeful towards homosexual behaviour has caused many queer people, especially youth, to be rejected by their families, resort to drug use, and in many cases, to commit suicide. In this exhibition, Murray presents philosophies of various religions to subvert the violent underpinnings of some Christian philosophies, with the underlying message that God loves you, no matter what.
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