The Prevalence of Religion

By turns repressive and repressed over the centuries, even today religion continues to provoke numerous debates, and esse decided to explore how these ideas are reflected in the field of the visual arts. In this context, we have deliberately bypassed questions concerning “spirituality in art” or the experience of the sacred to look instead at the political, social, philosophical, and aesthetic issues that religion raises in contemporary art practices. The artists featured in this issue create fictional works with a critical or humorous slant; borrow, subvert, or combine religious codes; make direct or symbolic references; or reproduce certain rituals. They address the theme of religion through situations that reveal the nature of its current significance.

In the opening essay of the thematic section, Boris Groys emphasizes that “every religion functions as a social and political representation of individual, private non-knowledge” — that is, religion is based on a faith that is impossible to prove, as “there can be no knowledge of God and His will.” Describing a parallel between religion and technology, Groys notes that the digital image is built by means of invisible codes that are as intangible and immaterial as God and that the image’s identity thus “remains a matter of faith.” The concept of faith is found elsewhere, in different forms, in a number of the essays in this issue: a faith that is confined neither to its religious sense nor to the meaning of belief — from which it is clearly distinct, according to philosopher Bruno Latour — but that maintains a relationship with the invisible and, by extension, the immaterial. This idea provides an opportunity to take a new look at how faith in the image is articulated in abstract works — in this case, faith in the relationships that unite images and their supposed referents (Rosamond).