My grandmother owned a delicate silver necklace with a “Schutzengel” pendant, a guardian angel that is supposed to watch over you. She gifted it to her daughter – my mother and my mother to me. That’s when I started to believe in angels. The necklace would protect me from evil, so to this day I wear it especially when I travel or move to another country. In primary school I was the only one in class who wasn’t baptized. I was devastated because I didn’t receive blessings and wasn’t allowed to receive a host in my mouth nor a cross of ash on my forehead. I felt left out. I wanted to wear a white dress with ruffles and a white bow in my hair for the first communion too. I enjoyed the smell of incense, the drama, the singing, the pomp and gold, the eeriness. The rituals are so alluring and captivating. I did not yet understand the backside, the exclusivity of it all, but looking back on my story and hearing about Gašper’s background, I realized, that we both share the imprint of a Catholic environment.
In his case, his reality didn’t exist, and he looked out for a glimpse of hope in figures like guardian angels. With his new works, Gašper is trying to process hurtful memories and is therefore “queering the tradition”, or more exactly queering the Christian iconography he grew up with. One could say that he is healing.
The depiction of his guardian angels shows characteristic features of socialist realism (the square, graphic way of drawing), a well-known stylistic device of Gašper. I perceive the color, that he uses as a sad pink, a purple with a melancholic shine. Purple also represents transformation and new beginnings, but it is also used for mourning and confession in Catholic churches as well and in connection with his angels, this makes a lot of sense. I think one thing that fascinated me the most about angels as a child was that you could never say, if they are explicitly male or female, they were neither, nor both. One could say that angels are genderless. Typical features of a guardian angel are huge, widespread, feathered wings, a long nightgownish dress with wide sleeves, naked feet, long curly hair. They are here to protect a single human being, whereas arch angels are divine angels of a higher rank and here to take care of entire communities. They wear attributes like a sword, a lily or a pilgrim’s stick. Gašper Kunšič built three angels of his own, the Loving Guardian showing the gesture of a heart with both of its hands that we are probably most familiar with from anime and photos on social media, the Fearless Guardian holding a sword in its hands, ready to defend and the Soothing Angel, growing a romantic flower out of its armpits to console you in a bodily way. These three angels form an entity for me, a strong bond within their triptych to guide your way, carrying an inherent power.