“I don’t know if you’ve ever been inside an Orthodox Church,” artist KT Seibert tells KQED, “but I just have a hard time believing that straight men designed all that …”
Seibert is explaining the origins of Be Not Afraid, their new exhibition at Moth Belly Gallery that combines traditional religious iconography and a modern, distinctly queer sensibility. Seibert’s bold work has transformed the Tenderloin gallery into a compact, colorful cathedral, offering catharsis for anyone who has ever yearned for a religious sanctuary but couldn’t find one that welcomed them.
Beaming down from the walls are holy hands, crosses, sacred hearts and roses, blood-drenched chalices and hallowed saints. Most are made with watercolor, but more closely resemble stained glass. There’s three pieces of Seibert’s real stained glass too, abstract and dreamy at the rear of the room. Each work is imbued with true spiritual reverence.
“I started this thought experiment,” Seibert explains. “If I’d been born in a different time, how would I reconcile being queer and trans? And what if I couldn’t be what I wanted to be and didn’t have access to gender affirming care? And I realized I would absolutely join a monastery or a convent and I would just make religious art with a bunch of neurodivergent queer people.”
Seibert continues, “I bet so much of the visual language we have from the church was actually made by queer people. I can actually see it.”
