The arrows really have to be iconic and they
have to be the thing that tells you this is Saint Sebastian.
Hi, my name is Holly James Johnston, I am a writer and researcher, although I am
also known as my drag king persona Orlando. We're here at the National
Gallery today as we are recreating Saint Sebastian as a drag king.
So, Saint Sebastian was a Roman soldier who secretly converted to Christianity, but
when his faith was discovered, he was tied up against a tree and his body was
pierced by arrows. Over the centuries this image has been recreated in
countless paintings, cementing Saint Sebastian's status as a man who was
persecuted for who he was and what he believed in. As a drag king, I was drawn
to Saint Sebastian because of the way he has been adopted by the queer community
as a queer icon. This is, in part, due to Saint Sebastian's persecution and the
abjective position that queer people have historically occupied within society,
however, a more obvious reason for Saint Sebastian's appreciation within queer
circles is, of course, his beauty. In Cima's Saint Sebastian, as with many
other representations of him, he is represented as a lithe, scantily clad
curly-haired youth, who is almost always pretty.
In some contemporary reimaginings of Saint Sebastian, he resembles more a
Ken doll than a religious martyr.
I think in terms of recreating Saint Sebastian as a drag king, I was drawn to
Cima's Saint Sebastian specifically because there is a nod to androgyny, or
even femininity, which I hadn't seen in other Saint Sebastians.
As a drag king I'm drawn to
masculinity that has an edge of femininity because as someone who is
assigned female at birth, I can relate to that more.
So Cima's Saint Sebastian, he's got very lovely curly long hair, he's got
rosy lips and he's also got big blue eyes and very neat eyebrows.
The challenge I found with this project has been the fact that Sebastian
doesn't wear anything, so the arrows really have to be iconic, um
and they have to be the thing that tells you, this is Saint Sebastian. So I made
the arrows from dowling, I used cardboard for the feathers and
for the wound at the base, I used rhinestones because I wanted something
camp and a bit, something that would emphasise the
performativity of the image. Another reason why this Saint Sebastian
specifically appealed to me is because there is
something sculptural about the painting. It's a painting of a Saint Sebastian
that's mimicking a sculpture, so I think that lends itself quite well to
photography.
From this image, I really want to capture something that's camp and melodramatic
but also something that nods quite sincerely back to the Saint
Sebastian story. As a drag king I was also very inspired by Aquaria on
Season 10 of RuPaul's Drag Race who did a Saint Sebastian-inspired look on the
runway, so I was interested to see how Saint Sebastian might translate
in drag king culture.
[Music]