LIG | KRUIS | KROON: The Story of Glorification Through Suffering

The Passion of Christ – the most famous story ever told – is something that has always inspired artists to try and make the unseen, seen. Some of the earliest accounts of Christian art dates to the 2nd century in Rome, where artists decorated the walls of the dark and gloomy catacombs as a form of funerary art and worship. Throughout the ages these religious depictions have taken different forms in the hands of many different artists- a tradition that I had the privilege of participating in recently.

I was honoured to be invited by Franco Prinsloo (CEO of FPG Group and conductor of the Vox Chamber Choir) to collaborate on an extremely poignant, conceptual artwork in commemoration of his third and final instalment of his trilogy of oratoria “Kroon van Wonders.” This oratorio recounts the events surrounding the resurrection of Christ and the events leading up to His ascension. The preceding oratoria also told the story of Jesus: “Lig van Waarheid” lovingly celebrates the birth of Christ and “Kruis van Liefde” viscerally narrates the crucifixion.

The concept was centred around “glory through suffering” – the main theme of the gospels. We wanted to create something that would adequately express not only the suffering and torture Christ endured on earth, but also the triumphant glory that prevailed from it. A contemporary re-imagining of the famous medieval altar pieces that brought the story of Jesus to life.

Prinsloo was inspired by the work of the French master Claude Mellan (1598 – 1688) who created beautifully detailed and sensitive engravings of Jesus Christ in various scenes of the Passion. Prinsloo carefully selected three engravings and cropped the images to focus on the face of Jesus. This new focus recontextualised the works and, when viewed next to each other, made the emotional impact undeniable as the three faces also conceptually represent the Holy Trinity. These three faces were then resized and recoloured in a beautiful golden hue fitting of the grandeur of the Passion. He had them digitally printed with archival ink on large scale museum standard Hahnemühle paper. It was then only that we noticed the swirling lines used in the engravings resembled fingerprints – God’s unique presence in our lives and in this work.

This was where the conceptualising really took flight, as Prinsloo and I started discussing the incorporation of elements of the Japanese art Kintsugi, which translates to "golden repair" or "joining with gold.” This beautiful artform is used in the repairing of broken pottery by highlighting the cracks and repairs with gold leaf. It is a philosophy as much as a technique, emphasising the idea that the imperfections of a broken object can enhance its beauty and value. Much in the same way that Jesus was “broken” and “damaged” through the torture he endured on the cross was made perfect and beautiful though His resurrection.

To conceptually achieve this, I decided to physically “torture” and “bruise” the prints much in the same way as Jesus had been – with thorns. I vividly remember the image of the Roman soldiers forcing the crown of thorns on Jesus’s head and pressing the thorns into his temples with wooden poles (a lasting image from a Children’s Bible Storybook my mother used to read to me). I took the thorn branches, covered them in resinous adhesive, and physically hit the prints with them, leaving these violent markings, punctures, and spatters. To reinforce the feeling of violence, I used a wooden pole to press the thorns into the paper, often resulting in the puncturing and ripping of the paper – which, to me, became the flesh of Jesus. This was an emotional experience for me, as I felt complicit in this violence and torture Jesus endured at the hands of the Romans. At that moment, I BECAME the Roman soldiers…

I approached the three panels of the triptych in diverse ways. The first panel, I created markings that sprung from a single tear running down Jesus’s face – I imagined Him in this panel praying in the garden of Gethsemane, crying tears of blood out of fear of what is to come. With the second panel, I became more forceful in my mark making. It depicts Jesus wearing the crown of thorns during his crucifixion, which lead me to focus my mark making on the forehead section where he would have been injured. The last panel, which I regarded as being Jesus resurrected, I created marks by both pressing the thorns into the paper but then removing them with my fingers, smearing them as Mary would have smeared the blood when she removed the thorns from Jesus’s head. These techniques each brought a unique visual element to each panel yet uniting them all.

Afterwards, as the resin had set a little, I started applying delicate gold leaf to the work (referencing Kintsugi). At this stage, my demeanour and approach shifted, as I went from a violent, physical state to a more gentle, delicate, and meditative one. As I applied the gold leaf, it made me think of Jesus’ mother, Mary, as she cleaned and nursed the wounds of Jesus’ lifeless body after the crucifixion. The pain and sorrow she felt must surely have been indescribable. The gold leaf, to me, felt like a healing balm or wound dressings that covered open sores. The golden colour, so brilliant and bright, symbolising the love of God in times of pain and sorrow.

The final part of the process was to dust off the gold leaf to reveal the markings I had created on the paper. This was such a beautiful but nerve-wracking moment, as one can never be assured of the outcome of the gold leaf process- it is heavily reliant on chance and luck. As I started dusting away with a soft brush, slowly, the most beautiful golden marks started to reveal themselves. At last, I had reached the “resurrection” part of the process – Jesus’s wounds have been healed and His body made anew in the glory of resurrection.

In the end, when all was dusted away, I was struck by the raw and striking beauty of the triptych. Franco and I have now joined the ranks of the countless other artists in history. We not only made the unseen, seen, but also highlighted universal truths about the Christian faith. These faces of Jesus, shimmering with golden glory, became a physical representation of just how we, as humans, are also broken vessels. But, by the promise of God’s true redemption and love, we are all healed and renewed.

The triptych entitled “LIG | KRUIS | KROON” will be debuted as part of the Kroon van Wonders concerts taking place on 29 May and 1 June 2025 at NG Universiteitsoord, Hatfield, Pretoria. Tickets to these events are available at voxchamberchoir.com.