Resurrection of a Victim

Resurrection of a Victim

(2019-2023)

Resurrection of a Victim is a reimagining of medieval illuminated manuscripts, triptychs, and altar pieces that subverts the patriarchal and religious dominance implicit in these mediums with its naked telling of queer desire, abuse, identity, and healing. This comprehensive body of work, completed over the last four years, examines how experiences of intimate partner violence and childhood abuse are situated within family histories, community context, and racial and gender identities.

Historically, medieval European illuminated manuscripts, portable altars, and triptychs were used as both private and public devotional objects for education, spiritual connection, and creative expression centered around Christian doctrine. Scholl’s work usurps the grandiosity and reverence of these objects while complicating binary notions of morality and victim-perpetrator roles by addressing the ways abuse can play out in queer relationships.

These works invite intimacy and reflection through intricately embroidered illustrations and poetry. A Warrior’s Birth, for example, is centered around a bold scene of a mermaid deity fighting off zoomorphized versions of abusers. For You, Everything recreates the experience of falling in love — both rapturous and ominous — in part through an effigy of the artist suspended from the center of the piece with limbs contorted in sensual yet impossible shapes. The embroidered illuminated manuscripts take on a playful tone while articulating experiences of betrayal, fantasy, frustrated desire, and rage.

By examining questions of violence, healing, queerness and agency with nuance, Scholl's work resolutely claims space for all, crafting a public place for a collective queering of healing.