Normal, IL
For an art historian, I don’t know much about Christian imagery. I was raised Jewish and have always preferred Japanese ink scrolls and relational aesthetics to Renaissance or Baroque art. But it takes no special religious knowledge to recognize the terrible wrongs perpetrated in Lexie Bragg’s “In Search of Christ.” Bragg’s series of chiaroscuro photographs depict young women, dark or red haired, in the nude and unjustly burdened: with a bloody nose, a cluster of sharp wounds, maggot-filled bread, shoulders onto which candles have been melted. These are portraits of abuse, abuses that are sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious, sometimes somewhere in between. None of it is excusable and none of it has anything to do with God, no matter what anyone tells a little girl or a grown woman or the court of law. It takes a brave soul to make work like Bragg’s. In a truly godly world, it wouldn’t be necessary.
—Lori Waxman 3/26/16 3:54 PM