Ten Holes

The video reimagines Christ’s side wound as a site of non-binary potential. The stigmata is reinterpreted as a form of pseudo-circumcision—not the resection of a phallus but the production of a vaginal opening on the male body. Traditionally, circumcision is a ritual that symbolically cuts away the impure and feminine aspects of the mother from the male body. Here, it is inverted into a ritual that bestows femininity. Beginning with a deceased man undergoing surgery to create a tenth hole on his side, the work takes inspiration from my father’s open abdominal surgery and weaves this narrative into Catholic mythology. Through a non-linear sequence of AI-generated imagery implying vagina, castration, and holes, the piece overturns conventional sexual structures, destabilizes the “fatherly” body, and envisions a world where patriarchal structures collapse and boundaries dissolve.