Joyce Lee and the nun with a pierced nipple
Erotic artwork is always provocative, and Joyce Lee ramped it up even further by weaving it through religious imagery. Art often turns to faith as a way of exploring even deeper taboos, and Lee’s Prayer series sees her fuse icons of religion with staples of brazen sexuality and pierced nipples and fishnets appear next to communion wafers. By using classic watercolour techniques with pencil, her work, which employs distinctly modern references, straddles a pre and post-internet aesthetic. While they’re laced with subversion, the beauty of her work means they breezily drift away from offence and into surrealism.
Prayer 3, for instance, recalls iconic paintings of the weeping Virgin Mary. The eyes are pleading, but no tears fall, making it overtly sexual. A tongue-piercing sparkles in the light as you imagine a tear might. Lee’s palette is electric, lit almost in neon. Pink cheeks blush cartoonishly, and blue undertones around the eye are amplified until the skin of Lee’s nun becomes a swirling mix of shades. Realism isn’t the aim, but every detail is realised in such staggering detail the saturation of the colours is almost secondary.
“I prefer to explore metaphors and symbolism rather than portraying sex realistically,” she told Dazed. “I also explore themes of gender, identity, equality, and sometimes empowerment through visual metaphors. I want the women inside my art to be liberated, and I want them to express their feelings freely with their bodies.”
Outside the Prayer series, her depiction of the female form is more fantastical and naked. Waterfalls cover vaginas and penises are disguised as plants. Lee somehow litters sex through her work without cheapening it. The lush surroundings and rich colours clouding these bodies often soften the shock.
Lee explains that the recurrent genitalia and suggestive fruit that feature in her work explore gender. “I get a lot of inspiration from objects and forms that resemble the human body, such as spherical or cylindrical objects which bring to mind the curves of a woman’s body or the shape of a man’s genitals.” Maybe in a bid not to offend, her Prayer series forgoes these. In their place are hints of provocation, sometimes even as subtle as the suggestion of a tattoo or nipple piercing.
That said, the nature of the nuns she depicts has forced her to clarify their meaning. “What I want to say through the Prayer series is a sort of freedom, not the eroticism of ‘nun’,” she writes on her website. “Most women inside my art, including the nun, are very strong and far from being shy or reserved. They never hesitate to express their feelings.”
The rejoicing of sexuality should be an awkward combination with religion, but Lee approaches both themes with equal reverence. Lee assures that she has always believed God is the “greatest designer” of the universe. She muses that we often think of creatives as progressive and God as “stubborn and conservative”.
Her work challenges that by forcing the two together. “My Prayer series represents religious conservatism, and tattoos or piercing holes on her face represents human free will,” Lee says. “I think God would not care whatever a nun does to her body.”
