The Art of Transcendence

IN THE SPAN OF OUR HOUR-LONG conversation, Mimi Mutesa, an emerging Ugandan-American photographer-videographer and an undergraduate student at Calvin College, a Christian Reformed school in Michigan, easily gives her thoughts on everything from the complexities of blackness to the policing of women’s bodies. However, when I ask her how her faith influences her work, there is a brief pause on the other end of the line.

“I don’t think it’s ever crossed my mind until this moment,” she says. When pressed, she explains that she’s “trying to tackle enough issues” in her art as it is, and evangelical culture has “far too many other problems” for her to address. Mutesa assures me that she still identifies as a person of faith but maintains that her relationship with God is “separate” from her relationship to art and social justice.

Perhaps this separation is a necessary one. It’s hard to imagine the average evangelical church embracing Mutesa’s colorful portraits of nude black joy. Her sentiments echo an unspoken opinion held by many young Christians, that if you want to be radical like Jesus was, you must do so on the margins of Christianity. More traditional folks may see this rush to the margins as a slick avoidance of the Christian call to profess one’s faith, or a symptom of postmodern discomfort with absolute truth. But what is more likely is that millennials of faith, especially millennials of color, want to engage with values traditionally cherished by the church but see modern-day Christianity as a direct hindrance to that sort of exploration, since significant portions of the church have been antagonists in struggles for social equality.

Reticence to conflate personal faith with artistic vision is deeply connected to a complex historical dialectic between the arts and the church: Mutesa’s midconversational pause is supported by precedent.

An imperfect human being

For example, a visual artist who lived during the 15th century wrote in his treatise on painting: “If we doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to these senses ... such as the existence of God or of the soul or similar things over which there is always dispute and contention.” These are not words one expects from a person whose work is featured prominently in Vatican City, but the name Leonardo da Vinci lends itself to all manner of exceptions.

Another artist, a drunken brawler whose path to fame includes committing murder, also painted his way into churches and chapels around Rome. He is commonly known by the name of his hometown: Caravaggio.This arrogant thirtysomething drew public ire with his numerous depictions of the naked male form, some going so far as to accuse him of turning a church’s roof into a “brothel.” It’s fortunate this artist, Michelangelo, didn’t listen to them, because if he had, the Sistine Chapel as we know it would not exist.

These men give rise to uncomfortable questions about what makes someone a Christian artist. Is a Christian artist someone who creates paintings or sculptures exclusively about the passion of Christ? What if the artists are not working for soli Deo gloria but for a paycheck? Should Christian art be a tool of conversion? What if the paintings are meant to scare illiterate peasants into papal obedience?

These are complex questions, but when I examine the life and works of the Old Masters, I am in awe that said work exists at all. All art is the result of an imperfect human being immoderately aiming for transcendence.

The composer George Handel—a character study in intemperance and dramatics—famously said of his Messiah, “Whether I was in my body or out of my body as I wrote it I know not. God knows.” This is what artists aim for, a synchronicity between that which they can control (materiality) and that which lies beyond.

Power, privilege, and positivity

But what often lies beyond the control of artists of color such as Mutesa is bigotry—how others see them. Historical whitewashing and institutional racism are topics that black contemporary artists Kerry James Marshall, Carrie Mae Weems, Mickalene Thomas, and Kara Walker explore thoroughly in their work. The art world has not been a friend to people of color or women, and in many minds neither has the church. In beautiful, surprising, and grotesque ways, Marshall, Weems, Thomas, and Walker detail what it means to live on the fringes of society.

Because of their examples, most young artists of color are situating their work at the nexus of power and privilege, using the words “postcolonialism,” “representation,” and “trauma” in their artist statements. These artists exist in direct opposition to the canon of Western art: “Christian” art by European men that has become the standard for “good” art, due to gatekeepers who enforce cultural hegemony.

So when Mutesa pauses in response to my question about her art’s connection to faith, it makes perfect sense. The question itself is fraught with meaning, especially now, when our political climate looks like one of Hieronymus Bosch’s apocalyptic paintings, in part due to 81 percent of white evangelical Christians who happily claimed a share of the blame for the nation’s current woes.

It’s tradition for artists to rebel against the way things are and use their work to make the world better. But I have seen far too many artists of color put themselves in danger by making art that is meant to upset white audiences or expose some horrid racial history. This sort of work is necessary but often also ugly or depressing; some of its creators talk about how their mental health suffers for the work. Mutesa is aware of this.

She has created a few works that might be considered political, such as one that involved sexist quotes from Donald Trump painted on the bodies of naked women. But when I bring up such works, Mutesa pivots the conversation, saying simply, “There are a lot of artists that address our systematically prejudiced judicial system, police brutality against black men, and disproportional rates of incarceration. I’m so infinitely grateful for artists that give their art to that form of activism. But I just want to add some positivity to the narrative.”

Care, kindness, and life

And she succeeds: Drawing from the bright colors of her Ugandan upbringing, Mutesa’s work provides some much-needed light and perspective. She uses soft lighting and vibrant hues, highlighting the contrast of brown skin instead of melting it into a dark background. The series “Triple F Bomb,” which features a quintet of plus-size models, calls to mind Peter Paul Rubens’ love of fleshy figures, while her portraiture in “Sunlight Is My Favorite Color” is an aesthetic cousin of Toyin Ojih Odutola’s paintings.

Mutesa’s photographs do away with what Carrie Mae Weems calls women’s tendency to “obscure the clarity of themselves.” Planted in time and place, the women in Mutesa’s images are fully human and present. They aren’t wearing crosses or reading scripture, but they look as though, despite it all, they have chosen life.

Mutesa said her faith is separate from her art, but I don’t know if that’s true. At the Christian college I attended, in an upper-level visual arts class in which students were required to draw nude models, my professor said that drawing is an act of paying attention to someone else, an act of humanization where we must recognize the imago dei in those outside of ourselves.

If this is the standard for Christian art, Mimi Mutesa certainly meets it. Her images reflect a deep belief in welcoming the “other”: They are imbued with a sense of care and kindness.

And if recognizing the imago dei in those outside of ourselves is also the standard for the church, the church would do well to dialogue with artists like Mutesa. They would have a lot to discuss.