Day 3  - February 19

Catherine Kapikian

Recoil
~ Inspired by Isaiah 58:1-2 &
Countee Cullen's Black Christ

I recoil at the memory that triggered this work’s creation.  In 1978, I read Countee Cullen’s wrenching poem, “Black Christ”, in which a young black man is lynched.  Overwhelmed, I sought relief by taking handsome brown/black cloth and tearing at it with needles, razor blade, and a small scissor until a tormented face and torso appeared.  I stitched this tortured black body to a predominantly white material with brown lines, inundating his body with white stitches.  Upon completion I tucked away my “Frayed Christ”. 

Fifteen years later when Yale Divinity School commissioned me to speak and create a work for their Biennial Symposium in Art and Theology titled “Crossed Cultures”, I retrieved “Frayed Christ”, amplified it visually with brutal images of racism, and risked ensconcing it in Yale's hilltop Georgian chapel chancel.  How fitting I thought, with all the racial inequities that suffocate New Haven just beyond this pristine campus’s boundaries.  I concluded my speech at the chapel’s lectern, my work behind me, with readings from “Black Christ”.  In a stunning moment of silence, immediately a single hand shot up, and acknowledging it, I was shot down and silenced, literally silenced. The person was the organizing department chairman.

But risk we must -- to rebirth a just country in deadly decline.  This work was returned to Wesley because a now deceased professor, Dr. Lawrence Stookey demanded it.  During our chapel renovation, it was removed and tucked away.  Nineteen years later, it was rediscovered and hung in a WTS stairwell by our Luce Center’s curator.  I take no pleasure in its continued relevance. 

Now that it has resurfaced with a new name, I hope that those who see it will be inspired to - “Shout out, do not hold back!  Lift up your voice like a trumpet!” (Isaiah 58:1-2).