My Divine Comedy

My Divine Comedy reinterprets Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy through the lens of my lived experience as a queer person raised within fundamentalist Christianity. Inspired by Dante’s journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, this series becomes an allegorical exploration of my own path toward self-acceptance—away from spiritual condemnation and toward queer liberation.

Reading Inferno, I found an uncanny resonance in Dante’s vivid depictions of eternal punishment. I saw echoes of the fear and guilt I carried as a child taught that my identity was sinful. Through self-portraiture and constructed scenes, I stage my own descent and ascent—blending Dante’s medieval cosmology with the inner architecture of shame, transformation, and reclamation.

This series asks: What does damnation look like when you’ve internalized it? What does salvation look like when you reclaim it for yourself? By reimagining sacred text through personal myth, My Divine Comedy becomes a visual ritual—a way of dismantling inherited punishment and celebrating the sacredness of a self once taught to feel unworthy.

This is a WIP, check back periodically for updates.