More on: Visual Art

From the beginning, I wanted to challenge people’s ideas about what religious art could be, to stretch categories and ways of thinking, to show that the artists of our time continue to engage in meaningful dialogue with the great faith traditions—and also that this art is in dialogue with the present moment. It’s unafraid to ask, “Who is my neighbor?”  

People also often enter sacred spaces at a slower, quieter pace, with a sense of anticipatory contemplation. This can be ideal for reflecting on art and ideas.

I found an unexpected resonance in D’Angelo’s low-fi, melancholy mood, articulated in the album Voodoo, which has mystified me for years. 

It seems to me that in displaying the profound aesthetic, cultural, and spiritual beauty of a common bequest like trees, we are moved to value them more and to experience an awe that humbles and amazes—something that makes us more respectful participants in the natural world.

What I enjoy instead are the faults of the hand, the jagged edges, the brashness of jugaar (an Urdu word meaning to innovate within a very small budget).

Nanto never ran out of stories. She would tell us stories of prophets in the desert, how people tried to scheme against them, how they were always too clever for the tricks or were helped by God in some magnificent manner.

As a queer woman raised Catholic, I have had a complex relationship to the church—making these photographs was part confession, part reconciliation.