About the Project Entombment of Christ
An impressive vocal and visual encounter with the French opera singer Erwan Tacher, whose voice INK Sonntag-Ramirez Ponce recalled the “vocal pitch of a Good Friday,” tipped the scales in favor of the art project “Entombment of Christ”. It complements the artistic examination of the Bible, to which the artist has devoted herself since the beginning of her work. Erwan Tacher was the model for the principal work of the project.
INK presented the project to her home parish of St. Martin Jossgrund – Oberndorf, and they were so taken with it that they wanted to implement it on Good Friday 2020 in the church of St. Martin, but due to the pandemic it could only be implemented on Good Friday 2022: A perhaps unusual, but certainly completely new form of a Passion devotion. An art project in picture, sound and word, for which the bishop of Fulda, Dr. Michael Gerber, gladly took over the patronage.
The aim of this art project is to touch and inspire culturally interested people with a theme-oriented, cross-genre art evening event on a special day in the church year. At the same time, it allows people to engage with this Christian theme in a new way. The special mourning character of Good Friday was taken into account.
Thus seven pictorial works, now no longer “only” drawings, but works that are collaged, with different levels and also with other materials making them reach into the space, met eight pieces of music from several centuries, performed by three opera soloists, chamber choir, chamber orchestra and organ, and texts from two millennia. In the process, the individual works appeared and disappeared, scattered throughout the dark church space. The voice of the speaker also used the whole church space, so that the audience was actively involved in the Passion service.
Not only the patron and guest of honor Bishop Dr. Michael Gerber, Fulda, was deeply moved by the art project, as could be clearly inferred from his words at the end of the event. From near and far, both the parish and INK received an overwhelming response.
The main work of the entombment will travel from Jossgrund to the world. It is selected to be exhibited in 2022 alongside art from a total of 18 artists:indoors worldwide for the world’s largest biennial for art with paper in Lucca/Tuscany. Also the whole project may travel to touch anew with the message of Good Friday in other parishes, other churches.
Quotes
“Sometimes it happens in the darkness, in the the absence of light that we currently experience so strongly, sometimes it happens that where we do not expect it, in a way that we do not expect it, in this darkness an image appears that tells of your healing story. So we ask you God this evening for your blessing that we may become aware that in these images a reality shows, your healing reality that has all along carried us and will continue to carry us in all the darkness we experience.”
~ Bishop Dr. Michael Gerber, Fulda, closing words of the art project before the blessing
“Why was it a pleasure …? Because it was just “different”. Because our own “setting out” resulted in a “discovery” and for some of us also in an “arrival”. Because in the objectively closed space of the house of God, autonomously, freely and imaginatively, a complex inner free spirit was made possible, which generated and gave birth to individual perspectives of one’s own spiritual desire. It is “art” after all, when we find ourselves in a completely new way and ultimately find that we can no longer go on as before. Previously seemingly incompatible components of contradictory structures of your (INK’s) art (drawings, music and language) have brought down our painstakingly learned and experienced images of inner expectation and thus created new space for transformational “displacements”…”
~ Norbert Beuscher, spokesman for the art project
