Sex, aureoles and the art of Rebecca Linders

Rebecca Linders idolises sex. She posts in her new series of drawings, Icon Nection, aureoles about sex situations. Sex icons, in other words. This is how she sanctifies intimacy. Linders: 'I had to learn to see sex as sacred.'

What does sex have to do with icons?

'Sex had always been off limits for me. Something you don't do, that you don't talk about. I come from a Christian background and anything to do with sex was negative. Bound by rules, boxes and compartments. Something that only fit within marriage. But even in that, you were not allowed to let yourself go too much. I had to learn to see sex as something sacred.'

Why do you do that by making art?

'I explore, through drawing, how my own worldview is put together. That's how I challenge my ideas and conceptions. I create a static image of sex, when of course sex is anything but inactive. It becomes a picture, simple and understandable. In doing so, I use lino print, woodcuts and I paint on cardboard or paper.

Sacral

Saints literally means: separate. I take a single moment, which I place completely out of context. That's how I place it outside myself, set it apart to better grasp it and make sex sacred.'

By putting a halo on an ass you are sanctifying that ass?

'You don't initially associate holiness with sex. Christians consider it icon as a carrier of divine energy and grace. By placing an icon over an intimate situation, I sanctify sex. In a sense, an icon is the meeting point of the material and the transcendental. The believer can detach from the world for a moment and connect with the invisible higher world. It must be on my mind, but when I read that explanation I immediately think of sex. Sex is earthly and animalistic. It is precisely by uniting the earthly and heavenly that I learn to see it in a different way. Besides, the halo as a feature also ties the different works together again.'

But why this need to make something beautiful out of sex?

'I have seen that sex, precisely because of all those restrictions, can cause a lot of abuse. That this entrapment leads to terrible situations. I had no choice, I had to turn it into something positive. The idea that sex is dangerous is the greatest danger of sex. That mindset evokes a sickness that goes into your body. I believe it can give you physical problems with intimacy.

Physical examination

But it can also get into your head. That's where I think nasty things like abuse come from. And again, where did you see that very often? Oh of course, in church groups.

Have you looked for other ways to deal with sex differently?

'I was doing physical research. Yes, you can take that literally. By having a lot of sex! That was very loaded for me. For example, I wrote the initials of those I had had sex with on my door. I was so preoccupied with those numbers, I do see that in more women. Not only with women who have a Christian background. Numbers and the meaning attached to them still play a role in my life. In my upbringing, it was said that sex became ugly if you shared it with several people. I discovered that this was not true. At least not for me.'

How was that not true?

'Sex can have different functions. When you are in love, you make a connection. But when you have sex purely for the sake of sex, you are always touching something inside yourself too. It is never an ordinary act. You learn how to interact with another person. You may not make a connection with that person, but you do relate to that other person. Emotions arise from that. Whether that was guilt, release, shame or love, those emotions always took me further.'