Why I created a transgender Jesus for our time

On Transgender Day of Visibility in 2026, I find myself reflecting not only as an artist but as a witness to a moment in history that feels increasingly urgent. I did not create Passion of the Crust to provoke for the sake of provocation. I created it because the world we are living in demanded it.

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We are in a time where political forces are actively attempting to divide, to marginalize, and to erase the existence of transgender people—people who have fought tirelessly for visibility, dignity, and basic human rights. Across the United States, lawmakers are advancing restrictions on health care, education, and public life that directly target transgender people, reshaping how and whether they can exist openly. There is a deliberate effort to push this community back into silence, to strip away hard-won recognition, and to frame identity itself as something dangerous or invalid. This is not just policy; it is exclusion. It is a systematic attempt to make people disappear.

I could not stay silent in the face of that.

Passion of the Crust began as a call: persistent, unsettling, impossible to ignore. My work has always lived in the space between suffering and transcendence, between what is seen and what is denied. And today, that tension feels sharper than ever.

Years ago, I believed I had completed my exploration of Jesus through my Chocolate Jesus series. But something remained unresolved. The body remembers what the mind tries to close. I began to feel pulled back, compelled to revisit this figure, not as he has been historically confined, but as he exists beyond the limits we place on him.

This time, the vision was clear. Jesus could not belong to one identity, one gender, one interpretation—not now, not in this climate.

To present Jesus as transgender is not to redefine him; it is to reclaim him. It is to recognize a divinity that refuses confinement and reflects those most often pushed to the margins.

This Jesus is not divided. This Jesus is whole.

A transgender Jesus statue, created by artist Cosimo Cavallaro.Courtesty Cosimo Cavallaro

In this work, Jesus is understood through a transgender lens—not as a symbol of ambiguity, but as a lived reality that challenges rigid definitions of body, identity, and belonging. And in that truth, there is no room for exclusion—only recognition.

Because if Jesus represents divine love, then that love cannot be selectively applied. It cannot exclude transgender people. It cannot deny their existence. It cannot erase them.

And yet, that is exactly what we are witnessing in today’s political climate. That is why this work had to happen now.

The sculpture will be unveiled on May 17 and placed on a heated plate, where it will slowly melt over three hours. This is not destruction—it is transformation. The form dissolves, but the essence remains. What appears fixed begins to shift, revealing the fragility of imposed definitions. Identity, as we try to fix it, disappears, but what is true, what is human, what is divine, endures.

The melting becomes a metaphor for what is happening in our society. Systems may try to reshape or suppress identity, but they cannot erase the core of who we are. The transgender community will not be erased. Not now. Not ever.

This work exists because of Rain Batingana, who did not simply model for this piece; she embodied it. A transgender woman whose presence shaped the work itself, she represents transformation not as conflict, but as truth. In her presence, there is grace, generosity, and undeniable humanity. She does not ask for acceptance—she exists as proof of it.

Some will say this piece challenges religion. That is not my intention. What it challenges is limitation—within religion, within politics, within ourselves.

What it confronts is the idea that divinity can be controlled, categorized, or used as a tool to exclude.

If anything, this work asks a simple question: Who gets to belong? Because the answer should be: everyone.

Artist Cosimo Cavallaro explains the meaning behind his transgender Jesus statue.Courtesy Cosimo Cavallaro

We are at a crossroads where silence becomes complicity. When policies and rhetoric seek to narrow who is deemed fully human, neutrality carries consequences. Where art must step forward and speak when others cannot or will not.

This piece is not an answer. It is an insistence—an insistence that transgender lives are real, valuable, and sacred. An insistence that no political movement can erase what is fundamentally human. An insistence that Jesus, if he represents anything, represents all of us.

As the sculpture melts, I will stand there with everyone else, watching it transform in real time. There is no script. No control. Only truth unfolding.

The body softens. The edges collapse. What remains is not the form we tried to fix, but the presence we cannot erase.

And perhaps that is the point.

Cosimo Cavallaro is an Italian Canadian contemporary artist whose work explores religion, identity, and the human body through provocative materials and large-scale installations.

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