Which Glitch is Witch?

Francisco Goya

Francisco Goya is an 18th and early 19th century Spanish painter and considered one of the last of the Old Masters in painting. The featured work, 'Witches' Sabbath' explores the typically taboo subject of witchcraft. While the rendering of the painting at the time would create a sense of alarm and moral panic, Goya’s rendering of the Baphomet-like goat figure creates an almost endearing presence where the dissonance between intentionally “unattractive” figures and the “cute” goat. In this way, the typical representation of the 'demonic' and the 'heretical' is glitched into an unintended function.

Cyrus Miller

Cyrus Miller is a graffiti artist born in 1974 and active in the early 2000s, living in the town of Barlow, West Virginia. Aside from being an artist, Cyrus is also an up-and-coming witch dealing with unnatural phenomenon in his small Appalachian mining town, and so his art helps him cope and chronicle the threats he faces (often with humorous intervention from his peers and coworkers). Due to unspecified reasons surrounding access to the original works, his graffiti works were faithfully recreated in a digital format.

William Steele

William Steele is a contemporary illustrator and digital artist with a focus in character and fantasy. His work reclaims the 'taboo and othered' topics of queerness and the history of 'witchcraft' to create an intersection where their commonalities and 'glitching and misfit within society' can be discussed.