Latest news with #PlasticJesus
Mada
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Mada
Plastic Jesus, real devotion
Xenia Nikolskaya's latest photobook Plastic Jesus presents a selection of photographs of Coptic merchandise and architectural interiors from her trips across Egypt between 2003 and 2010. The hardcover book, designed by Omar al-Zo'bi, includes 52 images, an introduction by Adam Makary and a love letter by Nikolskaya herself. The book derives its title from an American folk song — a religious parody about finding temporary solace in a plastic Jesus figurine, which opens with the following verses: I don't care if it rains or freezes long as I have my plastic Jesus glued to the dashboard of my car comes in colors pink and pleasant glows in the dark cause it's iridescent take Him with you when you travel far Nikolskaya's voice rises a pitch when she asks me, 'Have you heard the song Plastic Jesus played by the famous actor in that scene?' I pull up a low-res Youtube video, which I watch a few times on repeat. In the 1967 chain gang drama Cool Hand Luke, a rebellious prisoner who refuses to submit in a Florida prison camp gains the admiration of his fellow inmates with his heroic attempts to escape. Luke, a small town guy, is serving two years of forced labor for breaking off the tops of parking meters, just because there's 'not much to do in the evenin'.' The establishment wants to beat him down, but Luke refuses to let anyone think they've broken his spirit. When he receives a telegram about his mother's death, his cell mates, in a show of respect, silently leave the room one at a time, allowing him to grieve in privacy. Luke sits on a bunk bed and, staring into space, grabs a banjo and sings the popular folk song Plastic Jesus as a requiem for his mother: Get yourself a Sweet Madonna dressed in rhinestone sittin' on a pedestal of abalone shell goin' ninety, I ain't scary 'cause I've got my Virgin Mary assuring me that I won't go to Hell Nikolskaya's reference to the folk song in the title of her latest photobook completes a journey that unfolded over twenty-two years, and which brought her from Russia to Egypt. The book launches in Cairo this month. It comes at a time marked by a dramatic shift in the digital media landscape and the ways in which we engage with images and news stories. What coincides with a volatile global political moment is the possibility for horrific images of war, of detonated bodies, starved children, to be broadcasted live daily and reported by citizen-journalists out of closed military systems. To witness ordinary people forced to become heroes just to survive unimaginable pain under extraordinary conditions makes tangible the saint-like figure we often encounter suspended in the disbelief of fiction or religious scripture. We live in a moment where 'the saint-like heroes are the heroes of war,' as Nikolskaya puts it. In the image of Saint Mark the Evangelist, the first pope of Alexandria, believers see the symbol of a religion born amid the quiet whispers of secrecy. Saint Mark, whose family is said to have been a close companion of Jesus Christ, was himself chosen as one of the Seventy Apostles. He established the first church in Africa and spread Christianity through various places in Eurasia. With the founding of the church in Alexandria, he became the first in an unbroken lineage of Coptic popes. According to Coptic tradition, he was martyred in 68 AD by a mob of Romans who dragged him through the streets for two consecutive days until his death. He was also the first to inaugurate a far grimmer continuity: the steady current of Egyptian martyr-saints. A religion that spread under the threat of persecution would go on to favor concealable everyday objects over large structures to symbolize faith. The images of saints featured on ordinary items are redolent of a decentralized church, they are 'things that you have in your pocket,' Nikolskaya explains, 'in your car, your home. It's not the Cathedral of St. Mark, but for you, it can be as amazing as any of these monuments.' It is the church ever present in your home. Plastic Jesus depicts 42 disposable but sacred artifacts collected, or rather purchased, from Coptic gift shops along various historic monasteries and church complexes down the Nile Delta and Upper Egypt. The photobook is designed as a counter-museum catalogue with local religious figures featured on fridge magnets, pillows lined in faux-fur, mugs, pens, watches, rubik's cubes, smartphone cases — all either laser-cut, carved or printed on variations of silicons, aluminums and plastics. I. Coptic Kitsch Plastic Jesus evokes a nostalgic desire for kitsch objects to counteract the colonial and class biases of 'high' culture. These ordinary artifacts that populate the lives of believers are found in a variety of ever-changing trends in any Coptic gift shop across the country. Essentially, they're keeping a cultural economy alive in rural Egypt, where many of the workshops and factories are found. Coptic-kitsch re-packages ancient imagery for a new generation of consumers (read: believers). The book carries a certain air. It is cool, aloof, and doesn't give a shit if you think these objects are sacred — it tells you they are. The cover is laminated with a Gothic cross in hot pink pasted across an etching of Jesus Christ. Lined in matching pink paper, the book's sober typography and minimal color-scheme are designed to point your attention to the colors, textures and shapes of the 'flamboyant' artifacts in the collection. It asks that we play a game of code-switching, to reconsider these objects, not in their pure materiality, but in the image of what they represent. It doesn't question the sacredness of these objects, but rather celebrates it. It is precisely because they are sacred that Nikolskaya creates a museum-grade catalogue to exhibit them. Visitors in a Coptic church will often lay their hands and kiss icons on the church walls as a symbolic act to connect with a saint via a tactile engagement with their image. The image of a saint, believed to be sacred in the Christian tradition, is an imprint through which, in a collective effort of remembrance, the epic tales of struggle and the saint's attributes are kept alive. As Adam Makary points out in the introductory text, the preservation of sacred emblems is itself a sacramental act and a church duty. The images of saints also serve to reflect something back to believers by evoking their emotions. 'They're handlebars on a long journey,' Nikolskaya says when I ask her what they represent to her. With an almost religious assertiveness, she dedicates the book to 'the people of Egypt,' emphasizing that it is 'made by them for them and for us to truly believe what we believe.' The bold font, all in capital letters, of the dedication text, echoes the graphic intensity of iconic works of contemporary feminist art: the neon-colored posters in Jenny Holzer's 'Inflammatory Essays,' wheat pasted across city streets and Barbara Kruger's 1980s stark slogans in Futura Bold, layered over found imagery. II. Sacred Junk In between a steady stream of softly-lit artifacts in Nikolskaya's Plastic Jesus are spreads of architectural spaces where some of the objects reappear in context. Having first travelled to Egypt in 2003 as an archaeological field photographer with the Russian Egyptological mission, Nikolskaya wryly points to the colonial underpinnings of the field: 'I was often surprised,' she says, 'by the artifacts they chose to save.' She leaves it at that. But her critique surfaces through her architectural photography, which highlights archaeological sites not just as historical locations but as significant spaces that continue to be utilized to this day. The ancient sites are lived-in, even when in the absence of people — they display traces of movement. Rather than kill an artifact in order to preserve it, Nikolskaya engages with the tradition while it is still alive. These plastic trinkets, often dismissed as cheap commercial goods, are seldom included in the corpus of Coptic heritage. But by granting them museum-grade treatment, the book quietly insists that we reconsider them as tangible material of tradition. However the parody, as highlighted in the following verses of Plastic Jesus (the folk song), is that, while sacramental value is often associated with being eternal, cheaply-made things are manufactured in cheap material, which is prone to breakage, wear and tear, and disintegration into microplastics—so, at what point in the breakage of a Jesus figurine does it stop being sacred? Can we dispose of a sacred object and if so, how? Plastic Jesus, Plastic Jesus riding on the dashboard of my car though the sunshine on His back makes Him peel, chip and crack a little patching keeps Him up to par Plastic Jesus, Plastic Jesus riding on the dashboard of my car I'm afraid He'll have to go His magnets ruin my radio and if I have a wreck, He'll leave a scar III. Holy Assemblage Nikolskaya identifies as a secular Christian and places herself in the narrative. She seems driven more by curiosity than a set itinerary through the local landscape. Although she relies solely on natural lighting in her architectural photography, she manages to bring our attention to the stark contrast of colors and meaning. She highlights points of tension in the ancient sites: an electric fan on a bench near an altar in a fourth century monastery; a fluorescent pink satin fabric dripping off an old wooden cupboard against a wall painted in lime green; a digital embroidery of the last supper hanging crookedly above a row of plastic tables, themselves covered in Pepsi-branded tablecloths. 'If the light is there, you have the image,' she says, as if it were so effortless. The photos in Plastic Jesus, in the sheer amount of detail they carry, invite you to indulge in the tense juxtaposition of old and new, holy and mundane, authentic and mass-produced. The book highlights the affective (read: emotional) experience of a niche cultural economy of Coptic-kitsch artifacts, and emphasizes the need for a more nuanced approach to cultural preservation. But in the age of the made-in-China and as we continue to witness the catastrophic effects of microplastics on our environments, wildlife and subaltern communities, the book may leave you wondering: Have we crossed a threshold whereby microplastics are now so enmeshed in the fabric of our lives that they have even become things of eternal sacramental value? If the saints are with us, maybe they're made of plastic. Maybe that's the point.
The National
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
The Egyptian Coptic kitsch that inspired a work of photographic devotion
When Xenia Nikolskaya first went to Egypt in 2006, she thought she knew what she was looking for. Born and raised in the Soviet Union, where religion had been systematically suppressed, Nikolskaya was fascinated by Christianity, particularly its Eastern traditions. The granddaughter of an Orthodox priest who was imprisoned under Stalin, she saw her trip to Egypt as an opportunity to explore the Coptic Church and its rich history. But as life often does, her plans took an unexpected turn. Enthused by Egypt's colonial-era history, she instead spent a decade working on a photography project, Dust, which documented abandoned buildings in Egypt from that period. 'Dust distracted me,' Nikolskaya says with a laugh. Yet even as her focus shifted, she found herself quietly collecting religious souvenirs – plastic icons, rosaries, pillows and tapestries adorned with Jesus, the Virgin Mary or one of the saints. These humble, mass-produced objects were everywhere: in churches, monasteries and convents. 'They were being sold at every church I visited and for me, they were absolutely remarkable,' she says. 'So simple, so cheap, but so full of meaning.' Now, almost 20 years later, those objects take centre stage in her new book, Plastic Jesus. Part photography collection, part personal exploration, the book elevates these everyday items into symbols of faith, resilience and accessibility. 'It's a love letter,' Nikolskaya says. 'Not a critique, but a celebration of how faith can be deeply personal and democratic.' Nikolskaya's relationship with religion has always been complicated. Growing up in the Soviet Union where most worship happened under the radar of a strongly atheist establishment, she was taught to view faith with scepticism. During her childhood, churches were turned into swimming pools, and religious holidays were overshadowed by state-sponsored distractions, she recounts. 'On the night of Easter, they'd show movies like The Godfather or one of Bob Fosse's jazz films. These movies that were semi-forbidden because of their racy content were meant to keep people from going to church on religious holidays,' she tells The National. Yet, beneath this enforced atheism, religion lingered, a ghostly presence in her family history. Her grandfather, Georgiy Mikhailovich Nikolskiy, was an Orthodox priest who spent nearly 20 years in the Siberian gulag. 'Learning about his life after the fall of the Soviet Union was a revelation,' she says. 'It brought me closer to him, but also to the idea of faith itself.' This longing to understand her grandfather's world led her to study iconography and religious art as a young artist in St Petersburg. But it wasn't until she moved to Egypt that she found a way to connect her personal history with her creative practice. 'The Coptic Church fascinated me,' she says. 'It's ancient, resilient and deeply tied to the history of Christianity.' At first glance, the objects featured in Plastic Jesus might seem kitschy – a low rent tapestry of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, an image of the Coptic patriarch washing Jesus's feet in a tub embossed on a rubber keychain, and felt pillows with paintings of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus. But through Nikolskaya's lens, they become something more. Photographed against plain backgrounds and cataloged with meticulous care, they resemble museum artefacts, elevated from the mundane to the extraordinary. 'We presented the items against plain backdrops and included their size dimensions below each photo. I wanted to create a museum of this contemporary religious experience. I wanted to elevate the items and make them look important,' she explains. The book's title, Plastic Jesus, captures this tension between the sacred and the synthetic. Inspired by a rendition by Paul Newman of the 1962 song Plastic Jesus, which he sang in the film Cool Hand Luke, the song's lyrics recount a satirical yet poignant reflection on faith and materialism. With lyrics like 'Going ninety I ain't scary, cause I've got the Virgin Mary, assuring me that I won't go to hell,' the song highlights the deep bonds that people form with religious icons that they can take with them anywhere they go. Similarly, Nikolskaya's work embraces this duality, celebrating the accessibility and deeply personal nature of faith through objects often dismissed as trivial or kitschy. It's a nod to the accessibility of these objects, but also a reflection on how religion adapts to modernity. 'Faith doesn't need to be grand or gilded to be meaningful,' she says. 'It can be messy, imperfect, funny even. But that doesn't make it any less powerful.' To bring Plastic Jesus to life, Nikolskaya collaborated with graphic designer Omar El Zoghbi, a colleague from the German University in Cairo where she is a professor of photography. This approach is also a quiet critique of traditional institutions, such as churches and museums, which often dictate what is considered valuable or beautiful. 'Religious institutions and museums both have this authority,' she says. 'They decide what matters, what's worth preserving. But perhaps there is a world where these objects can matter too. Because they tell a story. They carry faith.' The book is also a reflection on materiality and spirituality. 'In a world focused on material things, some objects go beyond their physical form,' she says. 'They become symbols of something deeper.' While Plastic Jesus focuses on Egypt's Coptic community, Nikolskaya sees parallels with other traditions, from Latin America to Russia. One photograph in the book, taken in a monastery in Luxor, shows ancient Egyptian reliefs repurposed as the foundation for Christian symbols. 'It's fascinating to see how everything is recycled, intertwined,' she says. 'Faith is always adapting, always finding new forms. "Under all the dust and sand that many people associate with the pharaohs, Egypt is as colorful as India or Mexico, but people always look at Cairo and other Egyptian cities through the dust filter. With this book, we were trying to bring that colour out. Egyptian ancient history is fascinating, but it's also overtold and very popular. And there are so many things which are hidden or unknown that deserve attention," she muses. This sense of continuity is central to the book. As Adam Makari writes in the book's preface, Plastic Jesus is 'an ode to the fantastic; to the people of Egypt. Dedicated to the flamboyant glories and reminders of our everyday miracles; made by them for them and for us to truly believe what we believe.' For Nikolskaya, Plastic Jesus is not just a celebration of faith – it's a deeply personal project. 'It's my spiritual journey,' she says. 'I'm not religious in the traditional sense, but these objects resonate with me. They remind me of my grandfather, of his faith, of everything he endured.' The book is also a tribute to the resilience and creativity of the Coptic community. 'These objects may seem funny or cheap, but they serve a much more vital purpose. They remind us of what it means to believe.' As Nikolskaya's photographs show, faith doesn't have to be perfect to be powerful. Sometimes, it's as simple as a plastic Jesus in your pocket – a small, everyday miracle.
