Ayanna Dozier. Get on Your Knees, Jesus Loves You

About

The new photographs — which have been hand-printed by the artist onto various leathers — and 16mm film and film installations in the show often find the artist performing for the camera, and are primarily motivated by Dozier’s personal experience in a Christian fundamentalist church, which she belonged to as a teenager.

The first man I learned to serve was Christ and he was a model for all men to follow; both acts of submission required me to be on my knees. I construct images that evoke the feeling of shame, repentance, arousal, and anxiety that emerge within such a psychologically repressed environment. —AD

Dozier’s focuses on the repressive church hierarchies — where God and by proxy the pastor/father/husband/man are typically given respect and power not afforded to others — to address themes of submission, autonomy, and self-care. Additionally, the artist draws parallels between religious and BDSM practices, seeking to make visible “the psychosexual implications and rhetoric present in the Bible and within evangelical spaces.”

In a series of black & white photogravures imprinted by Dozier from her original film photography on cowhide and horse leather, high contrast, close-up imagery of women in dominatrix or church attire and frequently kneeling with her back to the camera leave the viewer to imagine the unseen encounters. Multi-image compositions, arranged in the shape of crosses, also integrate depictions of saints and other religious figures appropriated from classic paintings. The use of leather is fundamental in Dozier’s efforts to heighten the physicality of the images, which she describes as “flesh on literal flesh.” Dozier adds: “By using my experience in erotic labor to dramatize these images I also seek to re-orient my relationship with my body to frame it as worthy and divine.”

For the 16mm installation “Genesis 38:14-15” in which a single film is threaded and played across three projectors, the artist performs a pole dance routine within James Turrell’s installation “Sky Pesher.” The title of the work quotes the chapter containing one of the earliest references to sex work in the Old Testament. Dozier’s dance is at once a reclaiming and a desacralization of what may be considered a space of worship of God’s creation — light and sky — operating in tandem with and in opposition to “Turrell’s Quaker influence in the work.

In the 16mm film “Doing it for Daddy,” which was shot on double 8mm film and is projected onto a screen replicating the shape of gothic cathedral windows, Dozier recreates two acts/rituals from her own life which are seen side by side: dancing, as an erotic laborer; and the washing and anointing of her pastor’s feet, as a teen church member. Both performances take place in front of an inverted, projected image of Caravaggio’s painting “The Incredulity of Saint Thomas” in which the saint is seen inserting his finger into Jesus’ crucification wounds. The work raises questions concerning agency and society’s long history of criticizing sex workers while failing to undertake similar interrogations into the church.

Pious church girls, played by artist friends of Dozier in the 11-minute, single-channel film “Whore in the House of the Lord” confront their repressed sexuality and fascination with a female sex worker, who to their indoctrinated minds is seen as a conduit for the devil. Fittingly, the artist’s original soundtrack plays in reverse.

“Get on Your Knees, Jesus Loves You” runs from April 24 to May 31, 2025, with an opening reception on Thursday April 24, 6-8pm. Dozier’s work will also be featured in a screening and conversation at The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 8, 2025.