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| Justin Tanis (left) greets Religion Writer Peter Menkin at Pacific School of Religion 30 May, 2014 |
It seems to him unnecessary to mention he is transgender
for this piece since it deals with the artistic experience, but this Religion
Writer believes that his is a public stance as transgender and so as it is a
necessary component of his public persona and purpose it is mentioned here with
verve, by quoting from this statement from his official biography published by Berkeley,
California’s Graduate Theological Union. Dr. Justin Tanis teaches at the
Pacific School of Religion, part of The Graduate Theological Union located in
San Francisco’s Bay Area in Northern California. The Statement:
Justin earned his M.Div. degree at Harvard Divinity School
and his Doctor of Ministry degree from San Francisco Theological Seminary. His
dissertation was published in 2003 by Pilgrim Press as Transgendered: Ministry,
Theology, and Communities of Faith and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary
Award that year. That book was also the first in the CLGS book series. He has
also contributed chapters to the Queer Bible Commentary and Take Back the Word:
A Queer Reading of the Bible. An artist and photographer, Justin has had a
lifelong passion for the arts. His scholarly interests include the theology
expressed by LGBT visual artists, which is the focus of his PhD studies here at
the GTU.
Justin has served congregations in
Boston, Honolulu, and San Francisco and spent nine years as a denominational
executive, coordinating leadership and educational programs in twenty-two
countries. He has brings with him a long history with grassroots activism,
including ACT-UP and Queer Nation in the 1980s and serving as spokesperson and
media coordinator for the Hawai’i Equal Rights Marriage Project in the 1990s.
Justin’s work also includes advocacy for LGBT rights in national non-profit
organizations. He was the Community Education and Outreach Manager at the
National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) in Washington, D.C. and later
served as the Director of Communication for Out & Equal Workplace
Advocates, based in San Francisco, which advocates for equal employment rights
for LGBT people.
Dr. Tanis is an Ordained Minister in Metropolitan
Community Church, Los Angeles, that serves Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Persons. He tells this reporter by email (subsequently) that this is no longer the case, he is not ordained any longer, but gives no reason for his loss. For
the past years he has been attending the Unitarian-Universalist Church as a Lay
Person. So he tells this Religion Writer.
INTERVIEW
WITH JUSTIN TANIS; ANSWERS SENT IN WRITING BY HIM TO PETER MENKIN, RELIGION
WRITER
1.
Will
you go into detail on your sense of the artistic experience and whether it is a
religious experience solely when you are at work on a work of art? What medium
as artist do you work in? Is the artistic experience the same as the religious
experience?
Art contains possibilities that can awaken us to new
insights, perspectives and emotions, just as religion contains that
possibility. We can have these experiences when we are looking at art—whether
we gazing at something which is sublimely beautiful or being challenged—or when
we create it. The art work doesn’t have to be explicitly religious to do arouse
spiritual emotions or thoughts in us. I think about Picasso’s famous painting, Guernica, which shows the horrors of
war. One reason I’m drawn to it is that it connects with my religious
convictions about the importance of working for peace as a person of faith. It
troubles me, as it was created to do, and that can motivate me to take further
actions to end violence in our world.
Art can also show us the sublime, the intensely
beautiful or intimate and re-connect us with the Divine, with the earth, or
with other people. It gives us a glimpse through artist’s eyes of what is so
sacred or valuable to them that they have invested their energy and time to
create these works. Art can expand our understanding of humanity and the world
we share. Religions at their best, I believe, help us to increase our
compassion and commitment to the common good. They show us how to treat one
another as we long to be treated—art can give us greater understanding of how
others see the world and how they live, love, and move and are.
As an artist, I work in photography and drawing.
Both of these media allow me to take details of our world, often things that
other people may pass by without seeing, and bring them into view. I love things
like architectural details, like crazy carvings on a building, or the pattern
of a series of windows. I’m fascinated with how humans interact with animals,
both real animals and the images we make of them. And I love landscapes, going
for a hike and just taking pictures.
When I’m working on a drawing or finding the right
angle for a shot, I find myself in a very present place, not really thinking
about the world around me but very focused on one thing. It is a spiritual
practice that reminds me to be fully present and to be looking out for the
wondrous and miraculous around me. I think the artistic experience is a type of religious experience, with
possibilities for increasing our sense of wonder, of faith, of compassion,
deepening our spiritual lives.
We can also think about applying the ideas of art to
our faith. The great Jewish thinker Abraham Joshua Heschel replied to an
interviewer’s question about what advice he would give to young people and he
replied, “… remember that the meaning of life is to live your life as if it
were a work of art.” I first heard that quote years ago and it has always
stayed with me. It adds such depth to our lives if we think of them as
something to be formed and crafted. Our spiritual lives benefit from our
creativity, skill, and attention, from our work to make them as beautiful and
reverential and powerful as a masterpiece of art.
2.
Will
you discuss some of your art and tell us a little of your background. You were
speaking of the non-academically trained artistic sensibility? That is telling
me about the untrained theologian who is artist who has something to say as
artist? Talk more on this subject.
My current academic work focuses on the
intersections of art, religion, and identity, specifically gender and sexual
identity. I am looking at the works of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
(LGBT) artists and considering what we can learn about theology and identity
from their art. In art history, there is a term for “outsider artists,” those
who have learned their techniques outside of the academy or have not received
artistic training in a conventional sense. In the same way, I see these LGBT
artists as “outsider theologians,” meaning they have not studied religion in
universities or theology at a seminary and yet they have embedded original
theological ideas in their work. I’m interested in discovering what those ideas
are and how they can impact our understanding of theology.
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| Peter Menkin, Religion Writer (left) with transgender artist and teacher Justin Tanis. Peter Menkin, Obl Cam OSB, is shown carrying his iPod and notebook. He wrote and conducted the interview with Dr. Tanis by email. Answers were given in writing. Note at the end of this piece there is a video about art featuring Dr. Tanis at Graduate Theological Union. Picture by Terry Peck, photographer and architect. A team of three came to the campus of Pacific School of Religion for the photo shoot on an overcast day, 30 May, 2014. |
For example, David Wojnarowicz was a self-trained
artist who worked from the late 1970s until his death from AIDS in 1992. One of
his collages, called Untitled (Genet),
depicts the French author Jean Genet as a saint in the center foreground of the
image. In the background, we see an altar with an image of the suffering
Christ. He wears a crown of thorns but also has a hypodermic needle in his arm
and a tourniquet, as if he were shooting drugs. As you can imagine, this was
very shocking to some traditional Christians and they used it to condemn
Wojnarowicz’s work. But they misunderstood or never bothered to find out what
the image actually meant and was intended to convey, and that was very
different.
Wojnarowicz sued the American Family Association
(and won) for their use of his images out of context. During the trial he
answered questions about his motivation for creating this image of Christ. He
testified,
I thought about what I
had been taught about Jesus Christ when I was young and how he took on the
suffering of all people in the world, and I wanted to create a modern image
that, if he were alive before me at that time in 1979 when I made this, if he
were physically alive before me in the streets of the Lower East Side, I wanted
to make a model that would show that he would take on the suffering of the vast
amounts of addiction that I saw on the streets[1].
In this way, Wojnarowicz was very much in keeping
with classical images of the suffering Christ. He drew upon long established
and respected Christian aesthetic traditions to explore the pain and alienation
experienced by people in his own day and age.
To me, that is a profoundly theological statement. This isn’t a
blasphemous image; it is one that takes Christ’s connection with humanity very
seriously. The religious life isn’t always pretty. Images like this can be
important to our growth as people of faith because they challenge us to look
around us and see where there is suffering and to consider the question of how
Jesus would interact with that suffering. The church could benefit, too, by
considering how people who are outside of religious institutions are engaging
the image and life of Jesus to convey ideas like compassion, as Wojnarowicz
does. Art lets us literally see their understandings of Christ, and sometimes
that vision is more expansive than that of the churches.
As far as my art goes, I studied graphic design at
the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and multimedia design at the
University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Drawing I’ve learned through private
instruction from a wonderful teacher here in Berkeley, Susan McAllister.
3.
Talk
to us some about your work at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley,
California that you do as teacher with Faculty at the Center for Art Religion
and Education.
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| Pacific School of Religion, photographed by Terry Peck (as are all pictures on this page). This visit by Peter Menkin and Terry Peck was on an overcast day in May, 2014 at the end of the month. PSR is part of the Graduate Theological Union, located on "holy hill" adjacent to University of California at Berkeley, California. Peter Menkin's assistant Linda accompanied the two. |
I am on the faculty of the Center for Art, Religion,
and Education; last semester I taught a course on the Art of Holy Places, in
which we considered how people around the world have designated and decorated
sacred sites. Through the use of technology, we were able to visit places
around the world. Next Spring, I am teaching a course on the spirituality and
art of the Arts & Crafts movement, which was a late 19th – early
20th century artistic movement that focused on conveying values of
simplicity, beauty, and nature through art. The movement arose in response to
the intense mechanization of the Industrial Revolution and I do think that part
of the revival of interest in the Arts & Crafts movement stems from our
desire to reconnect with those same values in the midst of the speed created by
the digital revolution.
I also teach at Pacific School of Religion and am
offering a course this fall on Sexuality in Sacred Art, which looks at the ways
sexuality as a life force occurs in various faith traditions. The earliest art
we know of is related to fertility and abundance, the sustenance of life, and
that theme continues through many religions and many eras. Including Christian
art. For example, St. Sebastian was a pretty standard Roman soldier saint in
his early depictions. When he became known as a protector against the Black
Plague, his image transformed over time into a handsome young man with a fair amount
of sex appeal. This was in keeping with the idea that gazing on a healthy
person, or an image of one, conveyed that vitality to the viewer and his
sexuality was part of his vigor. In fact, for someone just shot with a bunch of
arrows as the emperor attempted to execute him, he looks quite well by the time
we get to the Renaissance, hardly bothered by the arrows at all. His lips are
full and red, and he rarely wears more than the minimum of clothing. He
inspires us with his vitality, both of his faith and the intensity of his
humanness. Sexuality and spirituality are both aspects of looking holistically
at human lives.
Teaching art history and art practice at a seminary
is incredibly rewarding. Part of what we do is encouraging students to read the
images theologically. How is the artist depicting the holy in this painting?
Where is God in this image? Sometimes art lets us see the invisible, the
unseen. Art can show us Divine attributes in visible form, can express the
ineffable. We can consider why an artist shows some things and not others. I
also have classes where students can create works of art, which provides them
with a different avenue of theological and spiritual expression than they may
be used to. It challenges us to use our creativity in theology and can free up other ways of thinking and understanding the world.
[1] From
the transcript of Wojnarowicz vs.
American Family Association as recorded in David
Wojnarowicz: A Definitive History of Five or Six Years on the Lower East Side
(Semiotext(e), 2006), p. 217.
See the Holy: Spirituality in the Art of David Wojnarowicz from CLGS on Vimeo.
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