60.96 x 22.86 x 6.35 cm
In this multi-part piece, Young looks to the fourteen Stations of the Cross, an established series of images depicting Jesus on the day of his crucifixion and the accompanying prayers. The concept of the Stations was born of out early Christian rites in which the holy site of the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem – the actually path that Jesus is believed to have taken on the day of his death – was ritualistically imitated. This could take the form of outdoor shrines, or printed illustrations, or could be more abstractly regarded as a holy pilgrimage taken by true believers to the Holy Land. At once a visual narrative, a guiding text, and a physical journey, then, the multivalent and multiform notion of the Stations of the Cross is fertile ground for Young’s inquiry into the structure of meaning and belief, and humanity’s aspirations to give form to those grand notions. These fourteen altarpieces – identical in size but differing in composition – have a fixed order, which should be displayed as to suggest a seamless narrative; each element is at once self-contained and part of a larger whole. Rather than illustrating the Christian storyline, however, the elements relate the arc of the viewer’s movement through a physical and cerebral space. In this way, the installation moves beyond its religious source material to a larger investigation of seriality, repetition and difference, and the authority of the artist vis à vis the viewer. In his removal of specific content, Young emphasizes our role, inviting our projected meanings and unseen personal engagements; an erasure that in turn generates an expanded and open set of possibilities.
