"Babylon Babies"

Triptychon

pigment-based inkjet print

signed, titled on verso (Triptych 1-3)

Portraits of the jeunesse doré, the Golden Youth of our time, contemporary inhabitants of a global anti-Babylon, in which the diversity of identities threatens to be lost in the facelessness of a Western culture.

Even in the early church in the first centuries after Christ there were fierce arguments about the permissibility of images in Christianity. The starting point was not so much the Old Testament prohibition of images, but the necessary dissociation of the still young faith from the ancient pagan cults, which were all oriented towards cult images. A cult image is an image of power; an image that makes the person it shows as much present as if he or she were present. There were also such images of the Roman emperors. According to Roman legal opinion, the emperor was entitled to a quasi-cult worship. Since the emperor could not be present everywhere, the everywhere spread image of the emperor formed his deputy, to whom it was necessary to sacrifice. Some of the earliest martyrs of the church were killed by the state because they refused to make this imperial sacrifice. Thus, in the 4th century, a whole Roman army, the Theban legion from Egypt under Mauritius, that declared their belief in the Christianity. Their faith forbade them to sacrifice the emperor, that is why they were considered as disloyal to the empire and were executed according to the code of martial law. This legion was stationed in Central Europe, the graves of the Theban legion, of Mauritius in Valais, Ursus in Solothurn, Cassius in Bonn, Viktor in Xanten, Gereon in Cologne and many others are scattered over Switzerland and Germany. Give to the emperor what is of the emperor, and to God what is of God. This is how Jesus responds to the question about the obligation of the believer to pay taxes to the Roman Empire. At the same time it also says that one cannot serve two masters. One must make a decision.
(Daniel Spanke, 2003)