Bitter Fruits | March 7 | 2-4pm | Performance by Jera MacPherson
Join us on March 7th for Jera MacPherson’s durational performance Bitter Fruits. Performance will be approximately two hours in duration, viewers are welcome drop in and out between the hours of 2-4pm.
Bitter Fruits is a performance which, similar to other works by Jera MacPherson, explores structures of
power and feminist themes of labour, purity culture, and coming-of-age within the LDS worldview. The
phrase bitter fruit appears in the Mormon lexicon in a few interlaced ways: Instances when church leaders
have referenced fatherless children as the negative consequences (ie. bitter fruits) of unmarried single
mothers; Eve of course, eating the forbidden fruit, and being cast from the garden for tasting the
bitterness of good and also evil; And finally a warning from a church lesson manual to not criticise the
leadership of the church and perform your duties to avoid suffering (“Beware the bitter fruit of apostasy.”)
that would come from defecting. Within the artist’s personal vernacular as an ex-mormon, “bitter fruits” is
a shorthand acknowledgment of breaking generational religious cycles and the joys and grief that
accompany thinking for yourself.
REFERENCES:
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2020/10/22christofferson?lang=eng
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1995/10/stand-strong-against-the-wiles-of-
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/teachings-joseph-smith/chapter-27?lang=eng
