Pietà
Renée Cox
c.2000
photograph

Renée Cox explores issues of modern Catholic upbringing and race in her photographic recreations of biblical imagery. She approaches her work from a perspective of personal need to confront her religious experience, and the issues of race within religion. Her work is not explicitly political, though its reverberations have been felt strongly-- Former Mayor of New York City took extreme exception to her work, calling them Blasphemous-- a charge Cox vehemently denies. Again we are confronted by the paradox of Anachronism-- when these images are updated, they become more foreign to us than when they remain planted in the sepia stained past.