Celebrating 2000 years of Christianity through art

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — When the Bible Society of Costa Rica decided to organise an art contest to celebrate 2000 years of Christianity, some artists were cynical about the project. “What does the world of art have to do with God?” they wondered.

Secular judges

Nevertheless, 140 artists were intrigued by the challenge and signed up. Only two were active Christians. Wanting to engage with culture through the contest and not present it as an exclusively Christian event, the Society chose a largely secular panel of judges, consisting of three well-known artists – a sculptor, an illustrator and a digital artist*. Dr Edesio Sanchez, a UBS Translation Consultant, also served on the panel, providing a Bible text for each contestant to base their work of art upon. The artists were given six months to prepare their submissions.

As well as producing a work of art, each contestant was asked to provide an explanation of how their piece related to the Bible text. The judges were not shown these explanations, however, purely basing their choices on the work of art itself. They allocated first, second and third prizes to their favourite three pieces, awarding cash prizes of US$2,900, US$2,200 and US$1,480 to the winners. The top three works of art were displayed, along with 37 other submissions chosen by the judges, in an exhibition in the Supreme Court of Elections – an excellent venue, as it attracts 4,000 visitors every day.

Shades of red

The country’s most popular daily newspaper, La Nación, published a lengthy article about the contest and exhibition in its culture pages, and encouraged people to visit. “Art is a language, and the Bible Society is interested in promoting this translation [of the Scriptures],” said the article.

The winning piece, ‘Gender’ – an acrylic painting in shades of red on canvas showing a figure, half man, half woman, with its arms outstretched in crucifixion – attracted much attention from the media as well as individuals. Some Christians were not sure what to think of the painting until they read the artist’s summary, explaining that she was trying to portray the fact that Christ died for all of humanity – both men and women.

The contest, which was part of an Opportunity 21 project called A Celebration of Christianity (see World Report 352/4), generated much publicity for the Bible Society and was an excellent way of generating public discussions about the Bible. (WR 386/6 - 6/7.04)

See World Report 363/10 for a previous article about the exhibition.

* A digital artist makes art for a digital environment, such as CD-ROMs, video games, web sites, or compact disks.