At the start of this project, I was really fixated on the idea of zombie nuns as an allegory for trying and failing to fit into a religious community. Scenes of my nun protagonist reading aloud scripture denouncing her existence as the living dead was my cringe little way of externalising how I felt trying to grapple with my Muslim background as a transgender woman: feeling like my physical body was a defilement of my religious beliefs.

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Included below are some of the initial sketches and one-sheets from this first idea 'sacred-foul' that developed into Lesbians of The Monastery. I eventually focused on the real experience of the mystic Benedetta Carlini through my research into queer nuns, and went for a satirical narrative that shittily narrated her life rather than a projection of my religious difficulties.