Katherine Sherwood's Pandemic Madonnas series (2019-present) reimagines Renaissance-era Madonna and Child icons as proud and resilient people with disabilities. Painted on found art historical prints and the reverse side of antiquated, colonial-era classroom maps, Sherwood substitutes the faces of the holy figures with digitally-collaged MRIs of her own brain, creating an uncanny dialogue between past and present:

“Madonna images were a key subject of the paintings I’d made in my punk days of the late 1970s. Wanting to address the shared reality of COVID in my paintings, I used them as a ground for disrupting the classic Christian narrative by depicting them as beautiful and revered disabled figures with protective masks and prostheses. A friend commented that they were scary. I was delighted because the pandemic is scary.”

– Katherine Sherwood, Garden of the Yelling Clinic (catalog), 2022

This work both subverts the dispassionate medical gaze with spiritual passion, and confronts the Church’s historical exclusion and abuse of people with disabilities with faith in our ability to heal ourselves and create an inclusive society. Sherwood’s paintings bring hidden histories to light, countering ableist representations and reclaiming space for disabled bodies in idealized depictions of beauty and salvation.