God (the) Mother:
The Gnostic Mary Magdalene and the Queering of The Bible

[M]Dudeck/ RELIGIONVIRUS

The word "bible", descending from the Latin biblia is neither singular or cohesive. Rather, as a library (biblia) it represents a sprawling archive of composite and contradictory texts, composed by a range of authors with differing perspectives over thousands of years. Many gospels and scriptures circulating in the Ancient Near East were denied inclusion into this curated library, and these renegade texts are now collectively referred to as the apocrypha. God (the) Mother excavates the alternative Mary Magdalene as featured in several renegade Gnostic Gospels, in effort to queer her historical archetype and [re]construct her symbology outside of the Judeo-Christian metanarrative. This excavation performs queer exegesis upon these punk gospels through the lens of The Magdalene Series at Rua Red, and Dudeck's own conceptual and performative practice of inventing a queer religion as art. While grounding the hybrid, queer Magdalene within the context of their fictional queer religion (RELIGIONVIRUS), Dudeck will perform their symbolic surgery and archetypal remixing of the Magdalene archetype as a liturgy for the queer [re]construction of the metanarrative of "The Bible."

[M]Dudeck is an artist, religious scholar and cultural engineer who invents their own queer religion as art. This project, called RELIGIONVIRUS has been performed, exhibited, screened and published in over thirty countries worldwide. Dudeck approaches religion as an artistic medium and employs tactics of fictioning, alternative archaeology and queer theology in their ongoing efforts to expand the category of the sacred and queer divinity into form.