One person is wearing red sweatpants and the other person is purple. Their bodies twist and contort, constantly threatening to topple over. It may be a hip-hop dance battle, but it’s a more intimate rebellion. This perfectly realistic diptych by artist Dewadi Hajab depicts the conversion of St. Paul. In spring, these two unfinished paintings of his will decorate the north and south vestibules of the Saint-Eustache church in Paris.
It was an “natural” choice for the artist, who is familiar with this cathedral-like church overlooking the Les Halles district in central Paris. In 2021, while still a student at the Beaux-Arts Museum in Paris, he painted two giant paintings of two more upside-down bodies trying to balance themselves on church furniture used for kneeling and praying. was on display there. At the time, Hajab had to reassure her Muslim parents in Algeria that they did not need to convert to Catholicism to be allowed to exhibit their art in Saint-Eustache. “This is not only a place of worship, but also a place of culture,” he told them many times.
Yves Trochelis, a church priest who gave Hajab complete artistic freedom, said this was not about “Christian art” but about “common and universal complicity.” Quoting philosophers such as Hegel, Kant, Adorno, and Benjamin, the priest speaks of art as “anti-fate” and speaks of art as an “anti-fate”.The priest hangs out around Les Halles from the underprivileged suburbs of Paris and appeals to the clothed and active youth. I hope to sue. He does not necessarily enter Saint-Eustache. “It’s not a question of converting them, it’s a question of starting a conversation without any desire to promote,” the pastor explained.
Even the most agnostic artist has to admit it: Saint-Eustache is 800 years oldth Celebrating its birthday in 2024 and hosting events such as the Luminescence Sound and Light Festival is a blessing for all forms of creation, from electro rock festivals to design shows. In 2023, the worn-out straw chairs were replaced with reversible benches designed by Constance Guise. . “For painters, it’s the holy grail,” Hajab said. At the age of 32, he follows in the footsteps of such notable predecessors as Rubens, Luca Giordano and Simon Vouet. Not to mention John Armleder, who painted two paintings for the church’s Chapel des Charcutiers, and Pascal Armleder, whose glass sculpture of Christ, donated by the Antoine de Galbert Foundation, subsequently settled here. There are also converts.
“It’s an object of art, but it’s also an object of faith.”
In the 1990s, contrary to the Catholic Church’s moral stance on AIDS, Father Gérard Benneteau, a priest at the time, opened a gallery with the help of exhibition curator Suzanne Paget, and all profits from the gallery went to donated to people. affected by the epidemic. American artist Keith Haring’s work, The Life of Christ, created two months before he died of AIDS in 1990, is a testament to this commitment. The bronze triptych depicts God the Father stretching out his 13 divine tentacles to embrace humanity, an angel hovering above the crowd, and finally the American artist’s famous pictogram ” It depicts a shining child. “It’s an object of art as well as an object of faith,” said Father Trokelis, who marveled at “Hering’s theological intuition, his exquisite expression of the Trinity, the heavenly, subheavenly, and superheavenly order.”
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