Date of Award
5-11-2025
Date Published
June 2025
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Studio Arts
Advisor(s)
Juan Juarez
Second Advisor
Joanna Spitzner
Keywords
Bisexuality;Christianity;Feminism;Painting;Reclamation;Soft Sculpture
Subject Categories
Arts and Humanities | Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Women's Studies
Abstract
Through painting and soft sculpture, I create a theoretical realm intertwined with my lived reality pushing against norms perpetuated by religious and secular heteronormativity. I mobilize my desire and dualistic experiences to initiate and recognize the uneasy and necessary conversations surrounding the ways we search for and live out our sexualities and identities in relationships and communities. Themes of acceptance stem from my personal life and are applied in the fictional realm through figuration, cropped imagery, and highly saturated colors in my paintings and soft sculptures. I rewrite art historical Biblical imagery and interweave them with my personal experiences, in order to exemplify the competing parts of my identity appearing in this fictional realm. I situate my own lived experiences through my alter ego, Trinity Sparkle, which runs parallel to Mary Magdalene. The intensity of my desire cultivates a fabricated safe space for my friends and partners where trust grounds the interaction between the figures and the viewers. This visual exchange complicates the push and pull of belonging as people operating fluidly around binaries born from religious and secular cultures. I challenge the conditioned conceptions of exclusion, inclusion, and authenticity of identity and relationships.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Schwartz, Emma Marie, "The Hagiography of Trinity Sparkle" (2025). Theses - ALL. 918.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/918
