VENGEANCE AND MERCY

Vengeance and Mercy utilises the objecthood of tactical, survival and prepper gear to explore eschatology, existential dread, and divine consequence. The work meditates on the schism that has resulted from the development of a monotheistic God who encompasses both creation and destruction, unconditional love and righteous fury. Amongst this landscape is a deliberation on what the concepts of prepping & survival mean to queer communities. The materials are repurposed here to play with biblical allegory and the survival of language, contextual understanding, and faith as they relate to queer knowledge, intimacy, and care.

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Enoch is an apocryphal text which details an ancient vision of the apocalypse and the landscape of an archaic earth with the entrances to both the heavenly firmament and Sheol, the Hebrew underworld.  The text recounts Enoch’s visions of the fall of the angels who were sent to watch over humanity on Earth. These watchers taught forbidden knowledge to humanity: the working of metals into weapons, adornments & cosmetics, enchantments, signs and movements of the Earth and the moon, meteorology, medicine, astrology, the making of art and writing with ink on paper, “the bitter and the sweet and the secrets of wisdom”. 

 

According to Enoch, these forbidden angel teachings are to be the cause of humanity’s downfall and doom.

 

In this work these angels are considered through a post-gothic queer lens. The general consensus is that these beings are agender and asexual, and yet in the writings of Enoch are described as feeling lust, pleasure, jealousy, rage, pride, regret. Both the fallen watcher and the left-behind are situated as victims of desire, vice and earthly submission, indulging in temptations that sit outside of the norm for which they were anointed.