women, out from the shadows

During my course in Feminist theologies, I did a collage exploration of some of the more famous stories of women in the Bible. In the collages, I inverted the idea that the men in the stories were central, and that the women were cast into the shadows; instead I centered the woman as central to the story. And in the visual representation, I cast the men as only shadows.

I worked primarily with 4 stories: the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, the woman who washes Jesus’ feet, and the women at the empty tomb.

In inverting the gender dynamic in the visual stories, I began to develop the thesis that when the Spiritual voice is feminine, the “shadow side” (in the classic Jungian sense) is a masculine narrative, that when unattended to, results in patriarchal oppression.

The project left me pondering the question: Is the patriarchal oppression rampant in the world today the result of unresolved shadow side of the feminine spirit of God?