About the Artist

Baz Here

Tender Feelings is a work in progress. I am reflecting on my relationship to Jesus Christ as a young child and how it relates to the dogma of Christianity. I was attracted to the naked body of Jesus, felt accepted and loved by him through my internal dialogue of prayer and daily small talk, while simultaneously judged and oppressed by his house (God and the church) to be a deviant and damned to eternity in torture. Christianity is often used as a manipulation — a device of oppression — weaponized in the hands of those who seek to uphold the dominant values within a hetero-patriarchal society. Tender Feelings is an attempt to counter this extremity of repression. Using archival photographs, childhood mementos, projections of baroque paintings, pornographic stills, and doll cutouts (many from earlier work, The Temptation of St. Baz), I create stage-like dioramas to satirically and playfully invoke the theater of shame, pain, and sacrifice a