Bin Laden as Christ stirs art furor

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SYDNEY, Australia — Down Under has been thrown for a loop with a small art exhibition in which two Australian artists depict Christian religious icons with Islamic overtones, including one image portraying Osama bin Laden as Jesus Christ.

The "lenticular image" piece, titled "Bearded Orientals: Making the Empire Cross," appears to be a beatific portrait of Christ, but if viewers move a few feet to one side, the image morphs into the face of bin Laden, mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the United States.

The mass murderer is shown in the same saintly pose as Jesus; eyes lifted toward the heavens, face aglow, a small halo above his head.

The artwork, one of more than 600 entries in the Blake Prize for Religious Art, appeared just days before President Bush arrived here yesterday to meet with one of his staunchest allies in the U.S.-led war in Iraq: Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

Like his former British counterpart, Tony Blair, Mr. Howard has plummeted in the polls over his support of the Iraq war, and he trails his opponent by nearly 20 points with an election two months away.

Mr. Bush is not too popular here, either. An opinion poll released yesterday found 52 percent of Australians thought he was the worst president in U.S. history.

Hundreds of protesters turned out last night for a Stop Bush 2007 rally, and the hotel housing the president, the InterContinental, looks like the Green Zone in Baghdad. A 10-foot-high security fence rings the downtown, and more than 5,000 police and troops are patrolling the city.

As in the United States, the majority of Australians oppose the war, and thousands are expected to protest over the next few days as Mr. Bush attends an Asian economic conference. Some Australians think the United States is persecuting Muslims, and one art patron yesterday said the bin Laden portrait conveys a powerful message.

"Well, people are obsessed with both, Christ and bin Laden; there's no difference," said a young art student who identified herself only as Dominique. Standing under the picture hanging high on a wall in the National Art School exhibition hall, she said the piece is intended to be viewed as "a comparison of fundamentalism."

However, Sydney is a religiously tolerant city and is exhibiting its freedom during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit here. Members of Falun Gong, the Chinese religious sect that claims persecution by the communist government, spent yesterday doing their rhythmic exercises in Hyde Park.

Nearby, the Art Gallery of New South Wales highlights its showing of "The Arts of Islam," while Muslim girls in veils play in the sun on a grassy hill across from the museum.

The bin Laden piece sparked an uproar when it first appeared, but artist Priscilla Joyce Bracks said the piece is supposed to be "concerned with the relationship between contemporary popular culture and the futures we create."

Eschewing Mr. Bush's purported black-and-white view of morality, Miss Bracks wrote in the show's program: "Could it be that we should not only be careful what we wish for but also be careful of the fears we meditate upon, for they may grow into reality from that energy?"

She was less equivocal in an interview with a local newspaper, saying her work can be seen by some viewers as a juxtaposition of good and evil.

That's exactly how Katherine Harrington, a former teacher at the school who toured the hall yesterday, saw the work: good versus evil. She said she didn't understand the fuss, anyway: "People said it was the same likeness; it isn't, not really. And the more people who see it, the more the controversy has died down."

Nevertheless, some mainstream Australians, who are overwhelmingly Christian, were offended by the piece and also by a statue upstairs titled "The Fourth Secret of Fatima." The statue portrays the Virgin Mary with her head and torso covered by a blue Afghan-style burqa, like the covering required of women in public under Taliban rule.

There were, of course, only three Secrets of Fatima, but artist Luke Sullivan ponders what a fourth message would have revealed: "The rise of Islam?" he suggested in a description of his work.

Politicians have jumped into the fray. "The choice of such artwork is gratuitously offensive to the religious beliefs of many Australians," Mr. Howard said.

Opposition Labor leader Kevin Rudd, a staunch opponent of the Iraq war and poised to take the prime minister's job, also criticized the artwork. "I accept you know people can have artistic freedom, but I find this painting off, off in the extreme. I understand how people would be offended by it," he said.

The Australian Christian Lobby also condemned the pieces. "It's really unfortunate people take liberties with the Christian faith they wouldn't take with other religions," said spokeswoman Glynis Quinlan.