'What is sacred to you?' This transgender Chicana artist invites guests to confess at Riverside Museum of Art

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Set us as preferred Inside the Universalist Unitarian Church of Riverside, a line of masked people filed into the red-lighted chapel, one by one, to take part in the rite of confession.The private booth was framed in flowers, and rather than a priest listening inside, it was a microphone recording their confessions, to be played at an upcoming art exhibition.

The brick triangle-roofed church that held the booth has stood since opening in 1892; that night, it was the site of a masquerade, or as Riverside artist Perry Picasshoe called it, the “Masqueerade.”Picasshoe, whose real name is Neveah Marquez, hosted the event, which had an entirely LGBTQ+ guest list and one requirement: Bring a mask, whatever that looks like to you.Marquez, a 26-year-old transgender woman robed entirely in red, stood at the pews and danced to the experimental electronic DJ sets and drag performances as guests entered in masks that ranged from papier-mâché deer antlers to collaged photos of eyes and lips.The event came as a celebration ahead of the Riverside native’s first solo exhibition, “SagradX,” which will open Saturday at Riverside Art Museum and remain through Jan.

31.The recorded confessions, layered over one another until they become an unintelligible cacophony, represent just one piece of the 25 paintings, photographs and interactive displays in the exhibition.

The show explores the meaning of “sacred” as Marquez documents her most private places and experiences, and asks viewers to consider what they hold sacred.The exhibition, she says, began with heartbreak.“The first time I started thinking about sacredness … was when my ex-partner brought somebody into our bed,” said Marquez.“I was crying, distraught, and drove over to these hills over Lake Mathews [in Riverside] and I realized: The bedroom was sacred to me.

That...