Gracie Margherita Elbel Luc Cimino

Veiling like votives like preciousness of platforms and the netting of your nakedness and you are the beholder and God is like the morning light and the camera in your phone.

DVR security camera system, performance piece, monitors, steel table

“The practice is to be naked. The prayer is to be seen. Seen. Like tenderness. Seen. Like eyes of protection. Seen. In absolute holiness. A witness, inherently aware. You, aware. You, sensitive. How do you ask for touch? Who is touching you right now? Through different fields of vision, there are openings to heightened awareness of touch. The pixel touches you through hovering. The camera touches you through zooming. God could be touching you the whole time. This veil manifests differently according to the mode in which you are praying. The platform (online/internet) is a setting that can hold space for both praying (revealing) and veiling (sensitive protection). If you took pictures of your body naked, on your device, on a platform. A platform, platform, stage. Like one that a statue stands on. Like ones that the Virgin Mary stands on in the chapel of a church. When you pray using a platform of witness you become a version of a votive. But how do you maintain your holiness? The very innate fact of offering that occurs from the posting of a body on the internet faces a multitude of judgments and inherent preconceived ideas. The use of the body (votive, statue) is transformed into the eyes of the beholder and the eyes of the camera. How are you seen, how are you seen.Creating a field of vision that shows yourself, whole, holy, in the state of body, but navigating the mode of veiling that must occur online. Censoring to create a mode of touch that is translatable to the digitization of prayer. The internet age has to bend in a way that accommodates for holiness of the body. This plane of touch happens when you zoom and record. This plane of touch begs for a degree of separation. ”