Father, Son and the Holy War Drawing

Father, Son and the Holy War/ Отца, сина и свещената война - pencil drawing on 300lb Fabriano Artistico paper, 53x74cm, Anton Terziev, 2024 The above drawing is based on a central detail of the icon of Christ the All-bearing, (Pantocrator) in the monastery of St. Catherine of Sinai, Egypt, the oldest surviving image from the iconoclastic period of the 6th century. The reason I reinterpret the image is that in my eyes Christ wears the halo of a modern MMA fighter - both self-sacrificing but also part of a bloody spectacle. Maybe the need to see the fighter in him , is not just mine. To emphasize and make this recognition visible I added the deformed ears. So called wrestling, or broken ears (cauliflower ears), typical of athletes who practice contact sports or mixed martial arts. Even these alone are enough to date my work to the present day, where every war has a "sacred" character, and the battles for (Christian) humanity seem more and more like a lost, and therefore even more necessary, cause. This drawing also, visually and meaningfully unites two of my cycles of work - Metacanon (2005-2014) and No Time For Losers (2019-) Title credit: Svetoslav Todorov - writer, editor, correspondent Collaborating since 2019 Part of No Time For Losers series of drawings, object, photography and paintings (2019-) Courtesy the artist Photo the artist