Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts

Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts fosters residencies, gatherings, exhibitions, and fellowship

Residencies
Based in Charleston, South Carolina, we offer a fully-funded residency program with juried selection, alongside less structured residency retreats for individuals and small groups. Gatherings
Talks, workshops, screenings, performances, festivals, and discussions with artists and religious practitioners online and in New York City, Charleston, and select locations. Exhibitions
Tradition

al and experimental exhibitions, showcasing visual, performative, literary, and other forms of creative works in artistic and religious spaces both in-person and online. Fellowship
A six-month professional development program for scholars and art managers to gain practical experience in administration, graphic design, fundraising, programming, and public relations.

05/27/2026

On Monday night, Mother Emanuel AME Church became a space for remembrance, reflection, renewal, and profound spiritual communion as acclaimed bass-baritone Davóne Tines and THE TRUTH made their Festival debut with REVIVAL. Produced by Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts in collaboration with Spoleto Festival USA.

Midway through Season 4 of Visually Sacred, Arthur Aghajanian’s conversations on material religion continue to explore h...
05/07/2026

Midway through Season 4 of Visually Sacred, Arthur Aghajanian’s conversations on material religion continue to explore how images, objects, architecture, ritual, and contemporary art shape the lived experience of faith.

From sacred space and liturgy to museums, contemporary art, and everyday devotional practices, this season asks how the sacred becomes tangible — and how visual culture continues to mediate belief, memory, wonder, and transcendence in contemporary life.

New episodes continue throughout the season.

Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (CBST) synagogue 130 West 30th Street New York NY (view from street)
Gabriel Dharmoo, performing Anthropologies imaginaires, Photo by Jan Gates
Nadia Huggins, “Black & Blue - Canaries, Saint Lucia” (detail), 2011

In Origin of the Tiger, Yu Ji presents a constellation of sculptural forms that treat the body as both artifact and land...
04/07/2026

In Origin of the Tiger, Yu Ji presents a constellation of sculptural forms that treat the body as both artifact and landscape, drawing on mythic and religious imagery to explore how spiritual meaning accumulates in material over time. Cast in concrete and embedded with metal and organic fragments, her figures appear at once contemporary and archaeological—objects that feel as though they have been excavated rather than newly made.

A key point of reference is the monolithic ancient sculpture of Krishna lifting Mount Govardhana, an image from Hindu mythology in which divine strength manifests through a protective, sheltering gesture. This monumental precedent informs Yu Ji’s interest in how sculptural bodies can operate as sites of endurance, support, and cosmological symbolism.

Alongside such references, the recurring tiger motif invokes its role within Chinese cosmology as a guardian and mediator between visible and invisible realms. By placing these mythic structures in dialogue, Yu Ji constructs a sculptural language that traverses geographies and belief systems, suggesting that the human body can itself function as a bearer of spiritual narrative.

Rather than illustrating religion directly, Origin of the Tiger examines how myth, ritual memory, and sacred iconography persist as formal and material pressures within contemporary sculpture, shaping how we read bodies, monuments, and the passage of time.

Yu Ji, “Origin of the Tiger” (installation view), 2026
Yu Ji, “Flesh in Stone - Anthropos VI,” 2026
Yu Ji, “Flesh in Stone No. 11,” 2025
Yu Ji, “Origin of the Tiger” (installation view), 2026
Yu Ji, “Play Know Attention - MEDIUM,” 2026
Yu Ji, “Origin of the Tiger” (installation view), 2026

In “Through Different Eyes,” Hortensia Mi Kafchin transforms the Leslie Lohman Museum facade with a three-channel moving...
04/03/2026

In “Through Different Eyes,” Hortensia Mi Kafchin transforms the Leslie Lohman Museum facade with a three-channel moving image, spanning the microscopic and the cosmic—from blood cells and code to cyborg forms and planetary bodies. The work invites reflection on perception as spiritual practice, evoking the “third eye” of Hindu and Buddhist traditions, a site of inner vision, insight, and transcendence.

Through shifting imagery, Kafchin frames seeing and being seen as a sacred act, where consciousness, transformation, and cosmic interconnectedness converge. The exhibition models a continual becoming, blending mystical, technological, and bodily experience into a visionary meditation on perception, recognition, and spiritual awakening.

Hortensia Mi Kafchin, “Through Different Eyes” (still), 2026
Hortensia Mi Kafchin, “Through Different Eyes” (installation view), 2026

In “RECURSION” at Marian Goodman, Agnieszka Kurant explores how complex systems, from artificial intelligence to collect...
03/24/2026

In “RECURSION” at Marian Goodman, Agnieszka Kurant explores how complex systems, from artificial intelligence to collective belief, generate patterns that echo cosmological cycles of creation, collapse, and renewal. Her works trace feedback loops between matter, information, and human imagination, suggesting that contemporary technologies are not only scientific tools but also new sites for myth-making and spiritual projection.
Drawing on concepts from physics, anthropology, and media theory, Kurant’s practice reveals how invisible forces—data flows, collective memory, and emergent intelligence—shape the visible world. In this way, RECURSION positions the gallery as a speculative cosmology, where spiritual allegories of interconnection and transformation reappear through the language of algorithms and systems thinking.
By framing technological networks as modern analogues to ancient cosmologies, Kurant invites viewers to consider whether today’s most complex systems function as secular metaphysics.
Agnieszka Kurant, “Recursivity 3,” 2024/2026
Agnieszka Kurant, “Alien Internet 2,” 2023/2026
Agnieszka Kurant, “Risk Landscape (Lviv),” 2024
Agnieszka Kurant, “Phantomatics,” 2026

“In Strange Days of a Quiet Sun,” at LA’s Nazarian / Curcio, Ken Gun Min constructs a richly symbolic pictorial world s...
03/19/2026

“In Strange Days of a Quiet Sun,” at LA’s Nazarian / Curcio, Ken Gun Min constructs a richly symbolic pictorial world shaped by East Asian cosmology, mythic animals, and celestial imagery. Working across large-scale, folding screen-like compositions, the artist situates painting within a space that feels at once narrative and meditative—an unfolding cosmic landscape of allegory and transformation.

Celestial bodies, hybrid creatures, and shifting terrains appear suspended in states of flux, evoking a universe governed not by linear time, but by cyclical rhythms, spiritual balance, and cosmological interconnection. Drawing on traditional formats while reimagining their symbolic language, Gun Min’s work reflects on how myth and cosmology continue to shape contemporary understandings of identity, belonging, and the unseen.

Through this layered visual language, Strange Days of a Quiet Sun invites viewers to consider painting itself as a site of cosmological reflection—a space where spiritual allegory, personal narrative, and the broader architecture of the universe converge.

Ken Gun Min, “Strange days of a quiet sun,” 2026.
Ken Gun Min, “Your love is not good (Camp Casey),” 2026.
“Ken Gun Min: In Strange Days of a Quiet Sun” (installation view), Nazarian / Curcio, 2026.
Ken Gun Min, “Beyond the struggle narrative (Okinawa),” 2026.
Ken Gun Min, “The pregnant tree (Secret map of Camp Garrison, Yong San),” 2026.
“Ken Gun Min: In Strange Days of a Quiet Sun” (installation view), Nazarian / Curcio, 2026.

In early April, the ICA LA will open “Speaking in Tongues,” curated by current FSA scholar in residence Amanda Sroka, Se...
03/17/2026

In early April, the ICA LA will open “Speaking in Tongues,” curated by current FSA scholar in residence Amanda Sroka, Senior Curator at the museum.

“Speaking in Tongues” brings together an intergenerational group of artists who approach art as a conduit to the spiritual, expanding how we understand the sacred across cultures and traditions. Drawing on embodied practices—ritual, ecstatic expression, and forms of translation—the exhibition reflects on the religious phenomenon of “speaking in tongues,” a state of spiritual overflow associated with Pentecostal worship. Here, however, that condition becomes a broader metaphor: for languages of the sacred that exceed comprehension, and for ways of knowing that persist beyond institutional religion.

Centered on Indigenous and diasporic perspectives, the exhibition considers spirituality not as doctrine, but as a mode of survival, kinship, and communion. By invoking altars, ceremonies, and devotional practices while also moving beyond the worship spaces, “Speaking in Tongues” proposes the sacred as something lived, embodied, and continually reimagined.

The exhibition will open at ICA LA spring 2026. For more information, see the ICA LA website, and you can also view Amanda’s talk at The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art on the FSA website soon.

Amanda Sroka at Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, March 2026
Aki Onda, “Bells,” 2021
Amanda Sroka at Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, March 2026

In “Na Boca do Sol II” at François Ghebaly, Los Angeles, Paulo Nimer Pjota draws on Indigenous cosmologies, Afro-Brazili...
03/12/2026

In “Na Boca do Sol II” at François Ghebaly, Los Angeles, Paulo Nimer Pjota draws on Indigenous cosmologies, Afro-Brazilian religious symbolism, ex-voto devotional practices, and Zen Buddhist philosophy, to explore how ritualized imagery, meditative discipline, and natural motifs transmit spiritual meaning across cultures and generations.

Water functions as a conduit between earthly and spiritual realms, while fire and red pigments signify cycles of renewal, transformation, and sacred labor. Turtles, crocodiles, and floral offerings evoke ancestral presence and devotional acts, linking contemporary painting to longstanding religious and meditative practices. Through a rich symbolic language that merges personal memory, collective myth, religious iconography, and Zen-inspired meditation, Pjota’s work invites viewers to consider how art mediates spiritual experience, where mythic time, cosmology, and devotion intersect within the gallery space.

“Paulo Nimer Pjota: Na Boca do Sol II” (installation view), François Ghebaly, 2026.

At Marianne Boesky Gallery, Kwamé Azure Gomez’s exhibition “Set the Atmosphere” explores the spiritual resonance of move...
03/10/2026

At Marianne Boesky Gallery, Kwamé Azure Gomez’s exhibition “Set the Atmosphere” explores the spiritual resonance of movement, music, and communal ritual.

Drawing on the artist’s experience in liturgical dance within Black church communities, Gomez’s layered paintings bring together the embodied languages of gospel worship and q***r ballroom culture. Figures emerge and dissolve within dense fields of color—arms raised in praise, bodies moving across dance floors—suggesting a shared spiritual register between sacred and secular spaces.

Through gesture, abstraction, and symbolic motifs—birds, flowers, numbers, and personal signs—Gomez encodes intimate histories and ancestral presence within the surface of the canvas.

“Set the Atmosphere” invites viewers to consider how performance, movement, and sound generate environments of spiritual transformation and momentarily shift the atmosphere of the world.

Kwamé Azure Gomez, “Somebody Calling you (All Goodby ain’t gone),” 2026.
Kwamé Azure Gomez, “Speak over yourself,” 2026.
Kwamé Azure Gomez, “Year of decision,” 2025.
Kwamé Azure Gomez, “Right back on in,” 2026.
Kwamé Azure Gomez, “Coming and going,” 2025.

In “Holy Bite” at London’s new Santi gallery, M. Lissoni examines the enduring symbolic and political force of relics. D...
03/05/2026

In “Holy Bite” at London’s new Santi gallery, M. Lissoni examines the enduring symbolic and political force of relics. Drawing on the historical tradition surrounding the Holy Nails, the exhibition considers how objects associated with the True Cross came to function as instruments of devotion, authority, and imperial legitimacy.
According to tradition, these nails were discovered in Jerusalem by Saint Helena and later incorporated into imperial regalia—binding sacred narrative to political power. Lissoni revisits this history to explore how belief becomes materially attached to objects and how relics circulate through systems of faith, governance, and cultural memory.
Across photographs, archival gestures, and installations, “Holy Bite” places canonical relic traditions alongside intimate and q***r fragments that exist outside official histories. Presented in formats reminiscent of reliquaries, these works suggest alternative forms of remembrance—where personal myth, embodiment, and private devotion reshape the meaning of sacred objects.

M Lissoni, “​​Spirit-Surplus” (detail), 2026.
M Lissoni, “​​Spirit-Surplus” (detail), 2026.
M Lissoni, “​​Spirit-Surplus” (detail), 2026.
M Lissoni, “​​Spirit-Surplus” (installation view), 2026.
M Lissoni, “Holy Bite” (installation view), 2026.

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