Joshua Deneumoustier

Epiphany of the Hierophant

Epiphany of the Hierophant (2020) is stream of consciousness micron pen and copic marker drawing on yellow bristol that meditates on the concept of the body under scrutiny by oppressive forces. Previously Exhibited at Embodied Narratives: Unveiling the Stories Within at OCAD University - Toronto, Ontario

“Epiphany of the Hierophant approaches the limitations of the body’s visibility by conveying the chaotic nonlinearity of the idea of the human body against societal standardization. In tandem with the mind, the body is diversified and transformative, the body carries the stories of people, the queerness of biology, the historicism of nonconforming identity, and expands beyond the tangible limitation of the flesh to portray human narratives that surpass the body itself in its finitude. Against yellow bristol, the black ink and red marker revoke the sterile white space of paper to convey the warmth of the chaotic sprawl of the body in combat against the historical and western standards of beauty and bodily control. The imagery is symbolic to the nightmares of the bodily experience but also the grace and beauty of communication through love and culture expressing bodily defiance.Having a body is often a horrifying experience accentuated by the anxieties of being born into this world navigating physicality within a finite and singular vessel. The fear of having a body is an underlying terror that connects many of our collective and individual hardships as humans living in the material world. In the sea of human bodies traversing this Earth, individuality is often a crushing agency entwined within the colonial Eurocentric structures of violence that ceaselessly brutalize, scrutinize, publicize, capitalize, eroticize, fetishize, ostracize, aestheticize, and objectify the idea of the body in every facet of its spatiality to meet a hierarchical homogonous standard. Too have a body is to exist within the complexities of the body in the ontological multitudes of its systems raging against societal relationality to oppressive forces. I try to visualize these ideas within the Epiphany of the Hierophant, creating an expanse of bodily amalgamations to convey the complex narrative of having a body in a world of oppressive ideas. Here the Transcendence of the bodily image uses drawing to convey the limitation of classification against the vastness of the human body and the uncategorizable quality of the body against the gender binary, heteronormativity, and neurotypicality.”