Neighbors and Faith in Community

Abstract

Artist Jimmie Durham’s neighborhood and Madre Museum nativities (presepi) reflect his aesthetic: they are composed of found and gifted natural and manmade materials, bear marks of the artist’s making process, and take representational or abstracted forms that instantiate Durham’s ways of sensing and thinking. Made from what many would consider trash and shaped into sensitively-crafted, diverse-looking entities assembled alongside one another, Durham’s presepi communicate his ethics: care for and engagement with what is often overlooked, taken for granted, or disregarded. As with all of his work, the presepi respond to specific places, beings, and conditions; spark considered reflection; and encourage interaction that inspires better ways of living with others. Durham’s presepi do this in the context of Christian faith in Naples, but extend beyond this realm to model respectful interaction with difference in its many incarnations.