Commentary on Eli, Eli, Lama, Sabachthani? Part 1 (David and Jonathan, and Abominable)

In the fall of 2022, I started attending a program called “Rainbow Sheep”, a group for LGBTQ+ identifying Christians. In the spring of 2023, after having attended multiple meetings, I begin to think about how I could reinterpret harmful passages from the bible in my artwork.

I spent a lot of time with Leviticus 18:22, which reads (accoridng to the NRSVUE) “You shall not lie with with a male as with a woman: it is an abomination.” My first thought in reading it and discussing it in Rainbow Sheep was simply “Then I will be abominable”.

This thought “then I will be abominable” spurred the first two pieces in the project Eli, Eli, Lama, Sabachthani? These pieces are titled David and Jonathan, and Abominable. Both are made on drawing paper using ballpoint pen, Abominable is technically a artistic rendition of the poem I wrote about David and Jonathan, and the full text of the poem can be found on the project page itself.

There are many things I want to point out in this piece, and I do not know how to go about writing them, but to start I want to point out the objects I used. David (on the right) has a halo made of lyres and white chrysanthemum, he has an empty music staff curled around his arm. Jonathan (on the left) has an arrow tattoo, and a flower crown made of forget-me-nots and purple Gloxinia. In their coloring, David, uses Yellow, red, green, and orange. Where as Jonathan uses red, purple, blue, and green.

But what does this all mean?

When I first showed this piece to a friend, they commented that I had used the bisexual colors for Jonathan. While this works, it was not actually my original intention. To me this piece is about David saying goodbye to Jonathan, and in some extent a part of himself. David is portrayed as older, with more grey and white tones in his hair, whereas Jonathan looks younger, quite simply because he died younger. And that leads me to Jonathan’s color choice: he’s purple and blue in order to mimic a corpse.

As for the objects, the usage of the arrow and lyre are meant to identify who is who. In regards to the flower choices, purple gloxinia represents love at first sight, and in this case is referencing Jonathan gifting David everything on his body when they first meet. Forget-me-nots are obvious in the name, and white chrysanthemums are funeral flowers and symbols of grief in certain parts of the world.

All in all, a piece that started out as an attempt to celebrate the existence of queer love in the bible, turned into a recognition of queer grief. This piece to me is truly about David grieving over the loss of Jonathan. And Jonathan grieving the person David becomes.

I’m not a big fan of David in the bible, he sexually assaults women, murders men, and is generally a “mob boss” of a man (to quote my brother). This is why I chose to have the rainbow background in the piece radiate from Jonathan, because to me, he was the better person.

In Peace,

Xi