The Sheet of Lucy, photography, L, Chicago

Huzzah! Yet another whip smart challenge from arguably the art world’s most provocative thinker, Chicago native, L. Never one for Kool-Aid, L’s latest photograph lifts the veil, so to speak, on a long-believed rallying point for Christians around the globe --The Shroud of Turin. While the striking negative of amateur photographer Secondo Pia’s photographic plate revealed what many believe to be the face of their savior, L’s “shroud” veils nothing more than a child holding a dryer sheet wearing an ironic T-shirt. But like all of L’s work, including the 20-story urinal made entirely of toilet paper constructed outside Paris’ Gard du Nord last fall, the end is only the beginning. By shooting her subject intentionally veiling herself, is L suggesting we are each our own savior? Is it childish to blindly believe in an image which radiocarbon dating has proven to be from the Middle Ages, over a millennium after the death of Christ? Or is it the trusting, reassuring nature of Jesus to lead us to find ourselves in his image? Don’t look to L for answers, she clearly finds the questions to be a richer, more rewarding sandbox. Lucky for us.