GLR January-February 2026

a kind of spiritual belief expressed not through words but through images and actions. It playfully and proudly flips the religious symbols once used to shame LGBT people. Queer kink artists take those old sacred signs, once tied to punishment or guilt, and strip them of their power to condemn. Instead, they fill them with hope and possibility, what scholar José Esteban Muñoz called “queer futurity”: a vi sion of a joyful, better future that turns tools of suffering into sources of pleasure and liberation. A key example of this bold visual reimagining is Derek Jarman’s 1976 film Sebastiane , which takes Saint Se bastian—a 3rd-century martyr usually depicted in Renaissance art as a beau tiful young man pierced by arrows in a moment of holy suffering—and transforms his story into a sunlit, Latin-speaking celebration of gay de sire. In Jarman’s version, Sebastian’s exile in the desert isn’t a punishment; it’s more like a pagan paradise. The arrows that kill him aren’t just tools of

tableau. The performance leaves Cas sils bruised and breathless, their body a testament to the physical cost of making oneself seen in a world that demands invisibility. The resulting photographs are not mere documenta tion; they are sacred objects, akin to the Shroud of Turin, bearing the ghostly impression of a struggle both physical and metaphysical. Cassils’ body becomes a site where anti-queer violence is not merely represented but endured, metabolized, and alchem ized into a silent testament of en durance. This visual theology isn’t confined to galleries; it is lived in the spaces where kink is practiced. It is common in queer dungeons to find small, makeshift altars, a candle flickering beneath a printed image of Marsha P. Johnson, a rosary coiled next to a pair of surgical steel clamps, a flogger draped beside a prayer card for Saint Wilgefortis (the female saint who miraculously grew a beard to escape an unwanted marriage, a perfect em

Poster for Derek Jarman’s Sebastiane , 1976.

blem of bodily autonomy sanctified through defiance). This syn cretic spirituality, this punk-rock bricolage of relic and restraint, prayer and pleasure, is a profound act of world-building. It cre ates a tangible lineage, connecting the spiritual resistance of the dungeon to the political resistance of Stonewall and beyond. These altars announce that our saints are here, our rituals are valid, our tools of pleasure are also our tools of consecration. In repurposing the crucifix, the halo, and the altar, queer kink does not mock faith; it stages a hostile takeover of its æs thetic machinery. It argues that the sacred is not the sole prop erty of the orthodox but instead a democratizing force that can be, and is, remade in the image of those who’ve been cast out. C ONSENTAS L IBERATION T HEOLOGY T HE SACRED SPACE of the dungeon, with its reclaimed iconogra phy and ritualized practices, isn’t an escape from the world but a deliberate intervention within it. If the rituals are the liturgy and the visuals are the scripture, then the unwavering commit ment to consent is the ethical cornerstone, the liberation theol ogy in practice. This is where the ecstatic experience transitions from personal catharsis to political blueprint, modeling a form of relationality directly antagonistic to the coercive powers of the state and the soul-deadening demands of capitalist hetero normativity. At its core, the BDSM principle of negotiation functions as a profound, sacralizing speech act. Before a single rope is coiled or a flogger is lifted, participants engage in a detailed dialogue about desires, limits, and triggers. This conversation is the an tithesis of the assumed, nonconsensual power dynamics that structure our daily lives, from the patriarchal family to the ex ploitative workplace. In the dungeon, power is not imposed; it is invited, discussed, and meticulously bounded. This pre-scene

torture; they become symbols of intense, almost spiritual pleas ure. The film ends with a long, quiet shot of Sebastian’s body, pierced but radiant against the sky. It doesn’t feel like a death scene; it feels like a moment of transformation both sexual and spiritual. Here Sebastian isn’t just a helpless victim receiving God’s grace. He’s an active participant in his own sacred experience, turning martyrdom into rapture. This is the heart of the queer kink æsthetic: taking stories of pain and suffering and reclaim ing them. It’s not about ignoring pain but about taking back its meaning from religious authorities and rewriting it as a journey toward strength, joy, and personal transcendence. This idea of creating new visual saints lives on in the work of contemporary photographers like Del LaGrace Volcano. In series such as Saints and Sinners , Volcano places genderqueer, butch, and intersex people in poses and settings that echo tradi tional religious art, complete with halos and classical framing. But this isn’t about asking to be accepted into the old religious canon. It’s about boldly declaring a new one. As Volcano puts it: “If you can’t find a saint who looks like you, become one.” Their subjects often look straight at the viewer with confi dence and defiance, portrayed with the reverence once reserved for holy figures. The soft, glowing light that highlighted the Vir gin Mary now shines on top-surgery scars or the worn leather of a harness. This is sacred storytelling for those who break gen der norms, a new kind of sainthood written not in ancient texts but in scars, sweat, and steel. Similarly, the performance artist Cassils turns the body itself into a living relic of resistance. In works like Becoming an Image , they attack a monumental clay pillar in darkness, the only illumination coming from the flash of a photographer, freezing their straining, sweat-sheened body in a visceral

January–February 2026

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