Maria Orantes

Fractio Religio

Fractio Religio is Latin for “Broken Religion” and these artworks are a collection of commentary pieces on why I believe Christian’s struggle with having a relationship with God, using my own experiences as a point of reference. As a Christian, I observed within myself and my friends a few reasons why it can sometimes feel overwhelming to be a follower of Christ due to our emotions, thoughts and feelings being our own worst enemy. I often find myself overthinking insignificant details and asking so many questions that I feel further away from God, digging my own grave with confusing thoughts. I found that when it comes to religion, and Christianity specifically, the entire point is to have faith, to trust God with His plan for your life and ultimately some questions’ answers are not meant to be known to man. 

The artwork “Maria Orantes” (Praying Mary) is a diptych of the biblical character, the virgin Mary, that represents how blurred and unclear our relationship with God becomes if we keep on fixating on every single detail and being obsessed with having all of our questions answered instead of having a relationship with God. It is meant to confuse the viewer to mimic the confusion Christians bring upon themselves due to their hyper fixation on things that are ultimately insignificant. The clear image of Mary being the message of the Gospel, and the blurred image the way we distort the message of the Gospel due to our tendency to overthink, over analyse and pick apart every single detail, instead of just being with God.”Crucem Iecu” (Crucifixion of Jesus) is the main piece in this collection that also deals with how we complicate our relationship with God if we keep overanalysing every single detail. The crucifixion is the main message of the Gospel: 

That Jesus died for our sins. Due to our obsessiveness for knowledge and answers, we can miss the entire point of why we are Christians in the first place. That Jesus came to deliver us from our sins, that He wants to save us from feelings of being incomplete and empty. The focus on minute details should not overshadow the fact that Jesus came to fill in that gap of incompleteness, He is meant to fill that hole, not endless obsessions of wanting to know everything. It is God’s job to know everything, not ours. Above is written “They do not know” in Hebrews, voicing Jesus’ final words on the cross.

Another struggle Christians face is the shamefulness of our current and past sin as well as the expectation we put on ourselves to be “perfect” and never sin. I want to portray this in “ Decempraecepta” (the ten commandments).  It illustrates the biblical character, Moses, carrying the Ten Commandments, however, he is meant to look unhappy. This piece is to show how Christians feel as if the rules and commandments in the Bible are too difficult to maintain as if it is crushing them with feelings of shame and guilt. The point is that God loves us as we are and does not love us less when we sin and most importantly, He does not expect us to never sin and make mistakes. We are human and fail sometimes. God does not punish us for having human flaws, he just wants us, despite our sins. He wants to carry that heavy burden for us. Written on top is “sin” and “commandments” in Hebrew. I hope to encourage Christians in their faith and so that they can know, they are not alone in their feelings of detachment from God. He is always there. Our minds can sometimes interfere and make us feel confused, overwhelmed with guilt and unworthy, but our emotions and thoughts will never change God’s presence in our lives, nor his unfailing love and His truth over us.

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