Stacie Monday

Let The Church Say Amen is a body of mixed media works on canvas, paper and wood. This body of work serves to explore femininity, identity and womanhood through the lens of Purity culture and the Black church.

While growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma and being immersed in the Black COGIC church experience I was keenly aware of my place as a woman, and was taught to stay in it. This training of purity culture, patriarchy, and what womanhood meant was instilled in me in a way that directly impacts my thoughts and living today.

So much time and effort goes into these spaces and for generations we have been trained to be in service to men, to present ourselves as acceptable and pleasing to God. I now see that this training did not serve me, but it did serve the institution and the broader culture of control and domination on women's minds and bodies. These are long standing traditions that affect so many.

With this body of work I hope to hold space to have a conversation around our sense of identity within this subculture of the Black community, and how that has affected myself and others as Black women in the south. I want to explore how we can decolonize our indoctrination in a way that breaks the cycles of trauma that is associated with the Black church, and it is my hope that the viewer would accept the invitation to this journey.

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