Decalogue Chapel, 2017
I attended Biola University, a fundamentalist conservative Evangelical University, for my undergraduate studies from 1995-1999. I was invited to submit this work for a group show.
The morning after I installed it, I received a phone call from the President and Provost of the University. They were inundated with phone calls and emails of anger, from students and faculty, because two of my commandments made a religious case for abortion rights, and affirmed LGBTQ+ persons. After a conversation, my choices were to remove the artwork completely, or erase what I had written on the back of the paintings. I chose to be censored, and I erased what I wrote on the back. I wanted them to live with the fact that they couldn't handle an alternative theological viewpoint on campus. They weren't even able to put out a simple statement that said "These viewpoints are not endorsed by the University". I erased the commandments that night.
This image shows the back after the erasure.