Christmas polaroids of Baby Jesus Nativity figures

by Aoife Duncan

I made this polaroid series during the Christmas 2020 Coronavirus lockdown in Ireland. Museums and galleries were closed and you weren’t supposed to meet anyone that wasn’t from your household. It was really hard to get inspired and do any work in studio. I listened to long podcasts on the even longer drives that I took, during overcast afternoons and dark evenings. I was looking for something visually interesting to stumble upon, somewhere, something, anything.

Pretty much the one thing you were allowed to do apart from grocery shopping or walking in parks with takeaway coffee was visit places of worship for private prayer.

So I paid flying visits to musty old churches and pulled over at outdoor nativity ‘cribs’ on the sleepy main streets of small midlands towns, with my polaroid camera in the passenger seat. It belonged to my parents, and is almost as old as I am. As a child I was enamoured by little ceramic nativity characters. My own family along with countless other Irish cultural Catholics take their nativity sets down from the attic with the rest of their Christmas decorations every year, wrapped up in old newspapers. Jesus isn’t supposed to be placed in the crib until December25 and the three kings can only appear on January 6. There is a bit of a ritual attached. There was something about the blueness of Mary’s robes, maybe it was baby Jesus pointing his two fingers skyward in a gesture of blessing, or the drama of giving birth in a manger, something about them sparked my childhood imagination. It was probably because they were fragile and therefore, not for kids. I was obsessed. I played games with the Mary, Joseph and Jesus, setting them up in theatrical doll house scenes, in imagined worlds where plastic Disney characters, Sylvanian families, Polly Pockets and toys from happy meals were all part of the storylines.

So, this, and being taken to the altar to marvel at the baby Jesus in the local parish crib after Christmas mass in Clonown, all became part of my personal mythology. For anyone that might be unfamiliar with these parish nativities, the figures can range from anywhere between five centimetres to a metre in length and the nativity scene’s wooden stable can be anything from medium dog-cage-sized to small flat-packed garden-shed-sized, it depends. (These wooden crafts are worth mentioning because of their creative carpentry that is usually sourced from the local parish – shoutout to my Dad, Padraig!) Each Baby Jesus in this archive is unique, and although some of the parishes have the same models, they present them differently.

I love each and every one of these figures, they are just so figuratively and literally adorable!

I wonder about their respective personal histories. In what country and factory were they manufactured? Are they ceramic, plaster or plastic? Who slip cast them from their mold and then painted their rosy little cheeks? How many years has the parish had them? Who dusts them off, maybe even re-paints them a little, sets up their display, and carefully puts them back into storage again?

Are they entrusted with the special task every year? (I picture expert, almost museum-standard handling from a local woman who cleans the pews and hoovers the altar every week before Emmerdale, reads Take a Break magazines, and has a kind heart).

Although these are mass produced objects, I like the idea of these local churches being sort of like museums for them as semi-precious artefacts that hold people's personal stories. These small statues are taken out of their places of preservation to go on public display for just a few short weeks every year. Each one has heard whispers of so many prayers, secrets, fears.

They’ve been imbued with bright white hopes of many locals who pause and take a minute during the miserable damp of long dark Irish winters. I feel like polaroid is suited to the subject, as a medium it has both sentimental keepsake-y and archival documentary-ish characteristics. The idea of creating a very personal, very local and arguably pointless Baby Jesus archive also appeals to me.

The little red rose someone has left as an offering beside the Jesus at The Green in Moate is really sweet. The teeny-tiny Jesus in the absolutely massive crib in Shannonbridge is hilarious. The Franciscan Friary in Athlone is the home of a Baby Jesus with the most beautifully painted pearl and gold manger. The blue lines on the Drumraney Jesus polaroid tell you that I needed to clean the excess ink off my camera’s rollers. A lot of the archive aren’t newborn babies at all, some look like they could be at least 4 or 5 years of age, even though the nativity is the actual birth of Jesus. They remind me of representations of Baby Jesus in old master oil paintings throughout Art history, which always depict strange, anatomically impossible, children-baby hybrids. My favourite Baby Jesus is the one in Taughmaconell, I think that the holly surrounding him is gorgeous. Plus, he really makes being the Christ Child look like the easiest thing in the world, all wrapped up and cosy under a warm yellow bulb, fast asleep.

The Sweet Jesus archive (2021) is a Polaroid series documenting Baby Jesus figurines around Aoife’s hometown in the Irish midlands. It is a part personal, part photography, part local heritage project. Aoife Duncan is a Visual Artist from Clonown, Athlone. She currently lives in Northwest London. She attended St Joseph’s College, Summerhill, and graduated from Fine Art in GMIT in 2017. She uses a variety of media including ceramics, photography, drawing and found objects to represent ideas relating to belief, faith and coping methods. She is inspired by her experiences of cultural Catholicism growing up in rural Ireland. She has received awards from the Arts Council, the Design and Crafts Council, and Roscommon County Council. www.aoifeduncan.art is her website and @holy_moly_midlands is her instagram