Artwork showing Virgin Mary as Stripper Stirs Up Catholic Campus

The Houston Chronicle is reporting that:

Artwork depicting the Virgin Mary as a stripper stirred trouble while on display at a small Catholic university before the piece was apparently stolen.

The print was part of an exhibit last month at the University of Dallas that featured the work of students at Murray State University in Kentucky. Joanna Gianulis, a senior art major at Murray State, said she was trying to raise questions about perceptions of saints and sinners and didn't intend to be sacrilegious.

"How do we know that an exotic dancer is sinful?" she said. "What if she has the best intentions and strives only to help those in need?

"Many single mothers are in this position and that is another reason why I chose to reference the Virgin Mary, because she was another woman who was in a tough position and probably received much criticism because of it."...

Asked for her description of the piece, Gianulis wrote in an e-mail:

"The work is a black and white woodcut relief print depicting a scantily clad stripper wearing a veil and holding a rosary. Other details in the work are scrolls saying 'Sinner or Saint?' in Spanish and referencing the Virgin (of) Guadalupe, and also a snake, some white lilies, a pair of scales, and also a small image of a bar of soap opposite a bottle marked 'xxx.'"

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Comments

[Al]

"Many single mothers are in this position..."

What position? To be an exotic dancer? To "strive only to help those in need" by being an exotic dancer? To be an exotic dancer because "she has the best intentions?"

This woman is an idiot....to suggest for a moment that a single mother has no other choice but to become an exotic dancer, an ascribe altruistic virtues to it, and then claim that the Virgin Mary typifies the same thing.

Incredulous!

[Terry]

Some people really throw their heads out the window don't they!!!