Hallelujah

( 100cm x 150cm, 2025 ) Right ‌in ‌the ‌tight space where inherited practices rub against structured religion, this artwork lands, showing women from the Celestial Church drawn into Masquradism. Here, the mask doesn’t exist to cover anything up, it flips the script and exposes what’s usually left unspoken. Wrapped in celestial white and standing with unmistakable devotion, those unseen faces read like a cultural core refusing to disappear inside imposed Christian frames.
 
For Sinatra Zantout, that push and pull isn’t distant theory, it’s family memory. Raised with a mother closely bound to the church and a father rooted in Islam, she learned early what it means to move between two spiritual lanes at once. That fracture runs through the painting’s nerve. It turns the work into a meeting point, private history colliding with a wider, shared story.
 
The piece nods to the quiet labor faith depends on, and to the central role Black women play in keeping these communities going, even when their work is brushed aside. It also presses a harder question: when religion promises protection, who actually receives it, and who gets asked to stay silent?