the term Guerrilla Exegesis

comes from the 1995 essay, Guerrilla Exegesis: "Struggle" as a Scholarly Vocation - A Post-Modern Proposal For Insurgent African American Biblical Interpretation, by Obery M. Hendricks Jr..

info

Guerrilla Exegesis is a knowledge exchange, personal library, and research site, comprising of more than 1400 books, catalogues, magazines, and printed matter. The collection has a particular specialization in Religious History, Christian and Jewish Art History, Black Theology, and Religious Folk Art.

In addition to the library, we regularly visit religious and spiritually significant sites and artworks around the world.

Throughout much of Western history, the Christian Church served as the primary custodians of cultural and historical narratives; first through scribes, and later through writers and artists, shaping collective understandings of identity, the nature of the world, and its origins.

As we continue to look to artists and writers to articulate our identities and interpret the world around us, Guerrilla Exegesis takes on the question of who is granted authority and access to occupy this role.

While this library is by no means a religious project (unless you count the devotional labor of dragging hundreds of books all around the world), a lot of the books in the library reflect our personal interest in religious storytelling in both visual and written form. We also frequently return to the idea of religious institutions as “the” grand storytellers of both the East and West, and as such, there are many texts related to religious history and religious mythology.

We are equally interested in the issue of financial access to books, and the barriers that economic constraints place on readership. This extends beyond the cost of acquiring books to include the limitations imposed on reproduction, such as restrictions on photocopying, digital access, and licensing. In this context, we feel strongly that public knowledge sharing plays a critical role to mitigate these barriers.

Ultimately, we see Guerrilla Exegesis as a knowledge exchange, and this project in all its various forms represents our approach to understanding, creating, and sharing knowledge about art, history, religion, queerness, blackness, ordinary evil, “freedom” projects, “explorers,” things that become mythologized into biblical proportions, passion narratives, blackness as an American export, the corny old hero’s journey, longevity as a form of dominance, devotional labor, objectivity as a virtue, “victory over self,” nostalgia for danger, funny stories lost in translation, and and and.

We’ll soon be launching a series of public gatherings centered around the exchange of printed and digital materials. These events will offer a space for participants to share books, articles, and other resources related to a common theme. More details to follow.

the image on the homepage is an interpretation of a painting by Howard Finster

"Words of Jesus Only” / 1981 / paint on reverse side of cut-out interior plywood paneling

You can find more of his work in this blog post, in the 2013 exhibition catalogue, “Great and Mighty Things: Outsider Art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection” and many, many other books.