Creative arts therapist statement 

Internationally renowned artist Nanette Lela‘ulu has incorporated the religious iconography of the stations of the cross as markers for the progress of one’s life journey. Condemned is the first of a series of paintings that became part of the process that helped Nanette convey the words and images for her graphic novel. The graphic novel’s story includes issues of identity, peer relationships, cultural identity, death and suicide. With these paintings, Nanette realised that she had begun to paint the youths who were the intended readers of her graphic novel.

I wanted my paintings of the ‘stations’ to read like a journey in one’s life, from the age of a child through to early adult life. For the first station (Jesus is condemned to death), I was interested in the idea of a youth being born into a family of crime and criminal-mindedness. From the beginning, he has a slim chance of avoiding a similar kind of life, because the judgement of him has already been formed through the actions of his father.

I aimed to convey a feeling of shame and pending darkness in this painting that looms contemplatively behind the character. Yet I wanted to also suggest the slight possibility that there is an alternative; a way out. In this group of paintings I used the earth as the way out. The nature and strength of the landscape offers a sense of relief and the solidarity of a home. The youth is clutching his chest for what he knows is his destiny, but in the other hand he holds a candle without a flame, with the knowledge that it may be lit, when he is ready to bear the light.

This is the first painting in the series. All fourteen stations of the cross are painted on the shirt. This was significant in the way a finger print identifies a person. A person’s destiny is often pre-judged by others who may have known things about this past that the person themselves have yet to identify.