Strange, sacred, sublime Exhibition of religious relics both reverent and tongue-in-cheek By: Conrad Sweatman Posted: 2:00 AM CST Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025 Last Modified: 12:35 PM CST Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025 Updates

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An internet meme showing an image of a skull with gaping sockets reads: “When a Protestant says something so Relicphobic, you gotta hit ’em with the St. Thomas Aquinas stare.”

The meme seems to be an example of what’s been called Catholic Core, a gen Z and millennial trend. Exploring Catholic themes and esthetics in a very internet way, Catholic Core occupies a tense place between reverence and irony in an era of disbelief and “online brain rot.”

“I did not know this!” says artist Francine Martin after seeing the meme.

“Yeah, that’s interesting, I had no idea,” artist Tricia Wasney says with a laugh. She is inside her art studio, which is brimming with second-hand treasures, Catholic paraphernalia and elegant jewelry of her design.

Word of this trend seems to tickle them because they are collaborating on a new exhibition, Reliquaries for Ordinary Objects, an engagement with Catholic reliquary that sometimes shares similar tensions.

The show opens on Jan. 16 and runs until Feb. 1 at La Maison des artistes visuels francophones in St. Boniface.

From highbrow art galleries to lowbrow meme culture, “post-secularism” — where a critically minded openness to religion and longing for the sacred persists among those who may have strayed from the flock — seems to be in the air more than ever.

What are relics? In Catholicism, they include objects that were touched by, belonged to or were physically a part of a saint. The strangeness of certain relics — at least 18 European churches, from the year 800 and onward, have claimed to possess Jesus’s foreskin — and veneration attached to such objects make reliquary an easy target for early Protestants, who accused Catholics of idolatry.

Nonetheless, it’s hard to deny the macabre beauty of so many relics, which have a distinct place in Catholicism’s often extravagant visual language.

“We are neither one of us religious, but we were both raised Catholic and we continue to find inspiration in, and are drawn to, Catholic imagery and iconography,” says Wasney.

Both artists admit there’s something tongue-in-cheek about their work.

Take Martin’s God Is Experiencing Higher Than Normal Prayer Volume…, a sculpture made of bone china, rosary and a wood intercom telephone that’s Wes Anderson-like in its formal whimsy.

“This is a commentary about the current state of the world, particularly relating to global conflicts. If God does indeed exist and hears our prayers, then this must be a particularly challenging time to be on the receiving end of our pleas,” writes Martin by email.

But the artists insist straightforward satire is hardly their aim.

“I find second-hand material extremely poignant (because) it belonged to somebody else. I was like, ‘People prayed on these; like, these are the real deal,’” says Wasney, holding a piece constructed from many rosaries.

Much of Wasney’s work in this show is a tribute to female saints or animals. One of her pieces is a shrine containing the shin bones of a deer.

“I witnessed a deer attack and his leg was flayed. (My partner) phoned the province, and they were like, ‘You know what? We’re not going to do anything.’ I was traumatized,” says Wasney.

The deer died quietly under a tree and nature rapidly took its course, with the body decomposing in about two weeks. The artist ventured out to retrieve bones to remember the fallen creature, which she ultimately decided to honour through her work.

While Wasney and Martin’s respective art contrasts and differs in obvious ways, both often use levity to try do something more serious: engage with the sacred and push against its established boundaries.

“I’m always interested in the history of objects and the meaning we assign. These are sort of things that you could attach so many memories to,” says Martin, referring to a piece of hers that features an antique ironing board.

“I think my idea is maybe democratizing what we think is special or holy,” adds Wasney.

conrad.sweatman@freepress.mb.ca

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