Art Corner: Rey Rey Fernandez
from ballroom culture to rebranding holiness, to social justice: this month we enter the world of photographer Rey Fernandez.
I grew up in the cradle of the Catholic religion. The Pope lives a few kilometres from my home. Every church you walk into in Rome is impressive, they ooze opulence and you can feel the weight of history. I find it both infuriating and artful.
While I am grateful to Catholicism for being my first introduction to the divine, as I grew up I moved away from it; I couldn’t bear to think that I needed to worship one, male, figure, or that my body was mainly made for reproduction, and that too many things that should be choices were seen as sins. In recent years, I have searched for the divine in other ways.
“God in a new dress, I like it!” These words were spoken with enthusiasm, something that is inherent in Rey Fernandez’s persona. His smile lights a room, his gratitude and humility softens hearts, and his love for creativity is his source of joy. Fernandez was born in the Dominican Republic but has been living in New York since he was eight years old. “Ahh, the tale of an immigrant!” he says as he caresses a very healthy looking pothos hanging behind him.
I came across Fernandez’s work through an exhibition called “Sacred Masculinity” in the Bronx Art Space. In it, four artists explore the theme of sacred masculinity, incredibly relevant in a world where we explore toxic masculinity so much more.
His digital collages are explorations of Yoruba deities, a religion that enslaved people from Africa brought to the Dominican Republic in the 1400s. The sacred and the divine are a big part of his work, and as I came to discover during this conversation, even of his life.
“This belonged to my grandmother,” he said, taking a small statue of the Virgen de la Guadalupe. He tells me that he was raised in a very Catholic family and that the reason why religion is such a huge part of his work is that, “We artists learn images by references, and I was so exposed to that school of thought, these are the visuals I know.”
He tells me that much of his work has been to explore ways to rebrand what holiness is, because although he appreciates the ideas of community, love and compassion that the Catholic religion teaches, only exploring that felt limiting. “It is almost like redefining what is holy,” and his digital collages show that. Images of Black men with sturdy physiques carrying hammers and screaming (a smiling scream) covered in colours that remind me of Mandalas, or in the sky with a typical image of what we imagine as holy.
The romanticised versions of ballroom want us to believe that this was a space where excluded people found each other and could finally express themselves, but this is not the entire story.
There is a strong sense of multiplicity and limitlessness in his work. “Mixing the modern, the mythological and the religious is a holy space for me,” he tells me. I can see the parallelism between his art and the history of the Dominican Republic, which was home to the first Black people in the Americas. The roots of Yoruba religion and traditional medicinal knowledge was slowly erased by the Roman Catholic indoctrination of the Spanish invaders, although the traditions remained in the words and stories of the people. The Dominican Republic is now almost 70% Catholic, but Afro-Dominican activists work to dig into their roots and remember life before colonialism.
The human need for connecting to the divine is undeniable, but to have agency in this search is incredibly important, and Fernandez has done just this. One of the places where he has found the divine is Ballroom. “It was electrifying, like something in my soul just rocked” he says about the time when, at fifteen, he saw Willie Ninja voguing for the first time.
“It was the only space where queer and transgender people could imagine themselves as beauty queens, or business executives, or even military,” says Fernandez as we discuss the categories of Ballroom. This subculture was initially created by the LGBTQ+ community as a way to find community and safety as well as an authentic expression of themselves. “There’s this duality with what society wants me to be, and with who I am, or what is right.” Ballroom provided the possibility to “reconcile that duality,” allowing him to meet fellow creatives and just create.
Non-binary thinking allows space for learning in dialogue and eliminating hierarchies that have led to systemic issues like racism and sexism.
The romanticised versions of ballroom push a narrative that ballroom was solely a space where people found each other and could finally express themselves freely, but this is not the entire story.
Fernandez explains that ballroom is also a place for artistic expression. It is a performance that requires various talents to get together, from dress design to choreography to art direction. “Everybody is the utmost creative in ballroom,” says Fernandez. “Everybody is talented, and you are able to connect and create.” Though he warns me it is no fairytale, and competition reigns on the stage.
I have often written of how society is both desperately in need, and utterly scared of, non-binarism, and I don’t just mean in the context of seeing gender as a spectrum, but also as a way of accepting our own dualities and multitudes. Non-binary thinking allows space for learning in dialogue and eliminating hierarchies that have led to systemic issues like racism and sexism.
“So much of what I believe is wrong with the world is that people aren’t honest with themselves,”
“I don’t like to limit·, says Fernandez when we speak of duality. As a child “you should have the space to explore different parts of yourself without those sort of repercussions,” he says referring to young boys who are often not allowed to explore their femininity. “So much of what I believe is wrong with the world is that people aren’t honest with themselves,” he continues.
And I agree with him, and we both argue that one of the possible reasons for this is a society that attempts to constantly place us in boxes. So much of the frustration of men living with the oppression of toxic masculinity is rooted in the fact that they are not able to explore their femininity, and there is a need for that bridge. “You cannot have one without the other,” says Fernandez.
At one point in the conversation, Fernandez uses the word ”beauty” in a context that makes me shift my own narrative about it. He speaks of beauty as an expression of authenticity. I have thought of beauty in many ways but never like this, and I believe a redefinition of the word is necessary for a society that has created beauty standards that are impossible to reach.
Expressing authenticity proudly is extremely liberating. “If you are able to access that, and show people whatever you want to be in these spaces: that’s the true beauty for me.”
I cannot help but see a common thread between the things we are talking about, that sense of feeling divine in your own body, that acceptance of dualities and the exploration of sacred femininity and masculinity. Ballroom offers all of this for its members, and I found it beautiful to discover that many new categories were created throughout the years to include more people, so everyone could walk in what they felt like. It was an exercise of inclusivity that the rest of the world can truly learn from.
“It’s sort of church really,” says Fernandez. “you just disconnect. You’re performing and it’s like something comes over you. It is just spirit flowing through.” And this is what Fernandez wants his art to be: a space of possibilities.
It is fascinating to see how spirit and divinity can be redefined, it is important for people to have agency over what they choose to practice and believe, and this is why exploring various forms of spirituality is incredibly important. As I wrote at the beginning, God in a New Dress feels like a way to incorporate the human and the spiritual.
I often wonder how much of our societal limitations have to do with the fact that there is both a huge need for free expression but also an incredible fear around the authentic expression of the self. As Fernandez says, one of the keys is to truly be honest with ourselves. His work is a metaphor of this philosophy, his photographs dance with the limitless expression of his digital collage. Reality and imagination, earth and air. To be able to live so authentically in art and life, and accept the limitations and shadow that comes with being a human, is something Fernandez does gracefully, and it is inspiring.
