| Reaction juxtaposes devotion and diagnosis, rendering belief as both gesture and side effect. The lower panel, based on Guido Reni’s Saint James the Greater, evokes classical sanctity: a robed figure with clasped hands and upward gaze, posed in prayer or intercession. Reni’s Saint is sculptural, serene, and spiritually aligned—a conduit between heaven and earth.
But the upper panel interrupts that serenity. A fragment of medical warning text—“get medical help right away if you develop any of these symptoms…”—floats above the saint, referencing allergic reactions, blistering, and mouth sores. The language is clinical, urgent, and emotionally detached. It reframes the figure below not as a vessel of grace, but as a body under threat.
Painted on mounted denim, the work resists sanctity. Denim carries the residue of labor, wear, and cultural grit. It’s a secular substrate for a sacred pose. The diptych format creates a visual and conceptual tension: the lower panel enacts belief, the upper panel diagnoses consequence. Together, they ask what happens when faith meets fragility—when ritual is interrupted by reaction.
Reaction observes this tension. A diptych of devotional posture and clinical warning, where belief is both gesture and symptom, and morality is stitched into the fabric of vulnerability.
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