“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 …”
‘Be Not Afraid’ Is a Cathartic Cathedral of Queerness
‘Take Up the Banner’ by KT Seibert. (Courtesy of Moth Belly Gallery)
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.”
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Seibert, born and raised in Baltimore but based in San Francisco for the last 15 years, returned to their Christian (specifically Russian Orthodox) roots at the start of 2025, while processing the loss of their relationship and home. Seibert thought about the best way to process their grief. They thought about their upbringing in the church and the hundreds of religious icons hanging around their Russian grandfather’s home. They started repeating a mantra to turn so much pain into productivity: “Don’t waste sadness.”
Seibert didn’t. One of the clearest examples of this in Be Not Afraid is Tower, a depiction of a simple white home with a black garage door that transfigures, via a series of ever-taller floors, into a towering temple topped by an Orthodox cross and wrapped in serpents. Tower is the result of Seibert processing the loss of their beloved home and a nod to the fact that they pulled the Tower card in a tarot reading just two weeks before their relationship ended. (In tarot, the tower is always a harbinger of doom.)
During Seibert’s creative healing journey, they found themselves forced to open up spiritually in order to finish Be Not Afraid. The paintings became a way to honor the original creators of the religious icons Seibert incorporated into their work.
“[In] the process of making an icon,” Seibert says, “you’re supposed to go into a trance. The process of making it is, in and of itself, a spiritual thing. It’s supposed to be a window into heaven and the realm, so when I was making these pieces, I was going purely on vibes.
“This has been definitely the most difficult year of my life,” Seibert adds. “Having something like this to put that energy into and connect with the realms was really necessary.”
‘Be Not Afraid’ is on view at Moth Belly gallery (912 Larkin St., San Francisco) through Jan. 31, 2026.
