Connections/Believing

My name is Marsha Hill, I'm a curator in the Egyptian art department. I call this topic, "Believing."

For me, it's not about belief, which is more static, but about believing in the presence of an artwork, interacting with an artwork. I think there are some objects where its emotion, its religious meaning

emanates from the artwork itself, and you really have to enter that experience if you want to talk about the object.

Because it's so difficult to approach any kind of godhead directly, you need somebody to help you. I think of them as mediators.

You relate to that figure and feel that you can rely, and that you can somehow trust it. These scribes were statues outside of the gates of the temple

and people could come to them to have their requests addressed to the interior of the temple.

A mihrab is this niche in the mosque with wonderful decoration around it that enriches and heightens the space. These were meant to orient you toward Mecca

and you feel very strongly when you look at a mihrab that it helps you reach something.

Some works of art that were treated by ritual, that were parts of processions, emanate a whole force field and a glow that you take in and respond to. Egyptian gods, when they left the temple, went on a small boat, and the Bark sphinx was at the front of the boat.

In its energy and its tautness, you can see that it's leading the parade. It was made with that kind of emotion.

These are incredibly beautiful, large Chola bronzes from south Asia. They have smooth, glowing

surfaces, which is because people were constantly anointing them, rubbing them, so even in their texture they speak about movements and treatments.

And you can imagine the masses of people, and the adorance, and the tumult, all of that going on around them. They have this atmosphere.

There's intimate objects, things that are small. You think of yourself holding it, and that draws you in, you're in that close, personal relationship.

Our Egyptian ancestor figure group is like that. It is for ancestor devotion, so people were looking at this, and coming up close, and thinking about the past.

I am not a Muslim, I don't read Arabic. I know the sheet from the Blue Qur'an is in kufic script, a religious script. What I am drawn to is the deep blue, the golden letters. Just the intensity of this coloration tells me that it's a very spiritual piece. So that's a piece I feel very strongly about without understanding.

Dionysus, he's a crazy god. I conceive of madness and chaos as things that draw us in.

These two women were driven mad by Dionysus. They did violent things, and they started taking their clothes off. That's the moment at which we catch them! They don't know what they're doing; they don't understand that they're standing there half-naked, it's like some horrible dream. It's very strong, the feeling of shame.

Believing brings transformations. Masks. If you think of inhabiting that Native American Mosquito Mask, you can become somebody else.

Drag performance. It's very powerful and magnetic. It heightens strongly the person doing the drag performance. You are riveted. You sense that transformation.

So many of these artworks have very powerful auras about them. That's a complication we have with strong, religiously empowered figures.

We have to enter that emotional or religious space and not be afraid of the believing

that works of art bring forth in us.