Editor’s note: This article from ARTINFO brings to mind Joey Skaggs’ Crucifixion Performance.
As a young artist living on the Lower East Side of New York City, Skaggs created a two hundred pound sculpture depicting a naked rotting skeletal corpse with a human skull, barbed wire crown of thorns, long human hair, and a metal penis dangling between the legs to protest the hypocrisy of the Church and man’s inhumanity to man. From 1966 to 1969, on Easter Sunday, Skaggs dragged the crucifix to various locations in New York City causing a range of violent reactions and police actions. The crucifix was destroyed by the public.
“You Might End Up in a Casket”: A Q&A With Mideo Cruz on His Controversial Dildo Jesus Sculpture and the Perils of Political Art in the Philippines
ARTINFO
August 16, 2011
What is Philippines-based artist Mideo Cruz going to do now that his native country’s former first lady Imelda Marcos personally demanded that an exhibition of his work to be closed? Cruz’s installation “Poleteismo” at the Cultural Center of the Philippines plastered the walls with a dense assortment of political and religious imagery “” as well as reliquary-like boxes and a large crucifix affixed with a dildo. It sparked the largest uproar over free speech of recent memory in the country, making international headlines, and leading the show to be shuttered amid rage from offended Catholics. Such was the uproar that even shutting the show wasn’t enough: an exorcist was called in to cleanse the space of “Poleteismo”‘s taint.
Cruz’s work has been branded little more than “shock art,” but the artist “” who says he lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for a time in 2009, incidentally, at the PointB Worklodge “” has a different take. Following the closure of the show, Cruz talked to ARTINFO about the meaning of “Poleteismo,” explained his take on the country’s political climate, and laughed at death threats from “people who call themselves Christians.”
Can you describe your piece and your inspiration for creating the artwork that has caused so much controversy? Continue reading “Artist Mideo Cruz on Art & Exorcism”