Mark Dawes, Staff Reporter

There is very precious little that this religiosity does for us. It is all a hoax. It is a tool of control.

Are you an art lover? Are you disillusioned with churchand organised religion? Then you might be interested in 'Religion, the Mind, Corruption & Social Consciousness', an art exhibition that will run for six days beginning Monday at the RedBones Café in New Kingston.

The show is organised by Kingston On The Edge (KOTE), a group of lovers of the visual and performing arts who yesterday launched the Urban Art Festival which runs daily at various locations in the capital city until June 30.

KOTE comprises a small group of art lovers and artistes. They are Beatriz Pozueta, Joachim Portocarrero, Carolyn Lazarus, Omar Francis and Enola Williams.

Monday's show, which gets under way at 6:00 p.m., will have exhibits from Audrey Lynch, John Campbell, Khalil Deane, Chris Craig and others.

Speaking with The Gleaner earlier this week, Enola Williams and Audrey Lynch said 'Religion, the Mind, Corruption & Social Consciousness' is not meant to offend but to challenge people to look at religion from a different perspective. Those attending the show should approach the art with an open mind, they said. They underscored that the exhibitors are not approaching the exhibit with an atheistic agenda.

Religion vs. spirituality

Audrey Lynch, who is also a teacher at Campion College, said religion is a "system based on dogma and spirituality is something which is more all encompassing and which deals with the whole person. It (spirituality) emphasises the inner, the soul, which Christianity basically denies."

Armed with one of her own paintings, Miss Lynch used it as a reference tool to explain her concerns about religion and the questions that needs to be asked of it.

She said, "I have always been a little troubled, by religious dogma - the way it has been used to control; as a tool of opportunity by the Western powers as part of their conquest of the New World and the African continent. It has been used as a tool of coercion and control in the school, in the home. The Islamic faith, for example, the way it coerces, controls and the sort of really dreadful laws it haswhich are all basically harmful to women and definitely harmful to all of us as a species.

"In this painting, the whole head space has been occupied, by religious dogma represented here by a church. This is ordinary man whose mind is colonised by the church to the point where he grows a cross out of his head.

She believes that there is a part of the brain that is undeveloped and that part is occupied by religion. Furthermore, the painting shows the man as having an empty eye - hinting by this the person's inability to see reality and/or get in fully in touch with his own spirituality.

Religion, she said, "is now commanding people's lives. It does not work though as (more) human beings are aware, and conscious. And so, there is this conflict and that is what I am about. Religion serves its purpose but we have managed to warp it. The first way in which we warped it was to demonise the feminine.

Demonising the sensual

Another way in which we warp it is that we demonised the sensual and the passionate and the intense. We have demonised all the pleasureable things, all the sensual things which were gifts to us from whomever, whatever that created and generated life. We have demonised it as a means of controlling people's behaviour. What we need to understand is that the individual is perfectly incapable of controlling him or herself. And instead of trying to mass-control people, we need to actually teach people to control themselves. Christ said "the Kingdom of God is within you". There is very precious little that this religiosity does for us. It is all a hoax. It is a tool of control.

The paintings and a lot of the other art work to be exhibited at Monday's show were specially created for that event.

Learn more about the Urban Art Festival at www.myspace.com/kingstonedge.

Send feedback to mark.dawes@gleanerjm.com

KOTE explained

The philosophy behind Kingston On The Edge (KOTE) is to provide a platform for contemporary artists to showcase their work that pushes the boundaries of the conventional initially intended for cutting-edge avant garde art, this festival welcomes all artists, including those working in more traditional styles.

The goal of the festival is to combine all forms of art being produced in today's society into a week-long celebration of the freedom of self-expression. KOTE will provide an opportunity for artists, venues and the general public to interact creatively, with a view to sustainably developing and harnessing the incredible artistic potential of our country.

KOTE will be host to multiple events. These events include visual art shows, movie showings, plays, concerts, an art auction, open houses, digital/multimedia shows and anything else anyone can think of. Redbones Café, on Braemar Avenue, in New Kingston, will be the headquarters of KOTE, but the Festival will take place all over Kingston. The relative dearth, in Kingston, of outlets for creative and innovative artists, combined with the huge surfeit of talent and ideas, means that this festival is both necessary and inevitable.

Taken from the KOTE web site http://www.myspace.com/kingstonedge