Alexandria Deters’s ongoing series But I’m Still Waiting for the Second Coming… (2024–present) extends her sustained inquiry into the language and psychology of belief. Her research centers on preachers, prophets, and self-proclaimed messiahs—figures who announce themselves as the Second Coming of Christ and proclaim that the world is nearing its end. By declaring “I am Christ,” rather than “I speak for Christ,” these leaders create a potent form of delusion that grants both themselves and their followers license for extreme conviction and behavior.
Each embroidered portrait in the series depicts one such man, accompanied by his own words—spoken or written—asserting his divinity. Rendered through thread, silk, and fragments of found fabric, these intimate works transform sensational and destructive rhetoric into slow, deliberate acts of making. The contrast between the meditative process of embroidery and the chaos such figures inspire reveals Deters’s deep fascination with the intersection of faith, obsession, and authority.
Through her research-driven practice, Deters uncovers the recurring cultural impulse to locate transcendence in human form. As she suggests, no one wishes to be the person who failed to recognize divinity when it appeared before them—even if the promised Armageddon has yet to arrive.