What if Jesus was a Woman/Christ Consciousness, watercolour triptych, 127 x 61 cm, 2020

...that rare phenomenon
The iridule – when, beautiful and strange
In a bright sky above a mountain range
One opal cloudlet in an oval form
Reflects the rainbow of a thunderstorm
Which in a distant valley has been staged
For we are most artistically caged.

Vladimir Nabokov in Pale Fire, 1962

Yagodina, Bulgaria

As we know, the best ideas spur out of nowhere - this is exactly where my idea to capture Bulgaria in its simplicity came from. It is the first one of my photography projects where I seek to build a bridge across generations and cultures and convey personal scenes that still remain universal. As Paulo Coelho said, it is part of the human condition to want to share things—thoughts, ideas, opinions. Although at first I simply shot scenes that caught my attention, my goal eventually crystallised; I wanted to enable any viewer to feel immersed in my photographs. Like a time machine, I yearned to make the viewer to feel at home in these ancestral scenes.

The painting is based in my village, Jagodina, close to the Greek border and south of Bulgaria. The woman with self-generating energy represents universal enlightenment and nature, emitting its beautiful array of colours. It is an adaptation of William Blake’s 1796 piece ''Glad Day Or The Dance Of Albion'. She seems to be a figment of imagination, yet for me, she is largely a state of mind which is wholly attainable. She is not fictious but a self-portrait. More pertinently, she represents something larger than myself: the powerful creative force.

The title is not so much an association to Christianity but its birth, Jesus, and evidently gender. Through this question, I wonder if Self would have been liberated, or at best, averted from thousands of years of patriarchal religious oppression. Exploring the roots of social and cultural power found in Western Judio-Christian-Islamic religion and its symbols, ideas and male-oriented language that essentially oppress women. I want to challenge the stereotypical boundaries imposed by God-language.

Mary Beth Edelson, in her ‘Woman Rising’ series, perceives goddess imagery as a metaphor for “radical change and change of consciousness…while opening other realms of experience”. Challenging the status-quo is a “profoundly political act against the patriarchy and for spiritual liberation—the ramifications of which are still unfolding.” What is this power we have within and where is it? According to Jung, man is not created in God’s image, but rather we are all Gods and Goddesses... for self is truly divine.