Arts, Spirituality, and Religion

Abstract

This Special Issue, Arts, Spirituality, and Religion, explores the dynamic intersections among art, spirituality, and religion across diverse cultural, historical, and media contexts. Bringing together studies that range from biblical imagery and Marian theology to Chinese ritual space, poetic symbolism, musical cosmology, and contemporary visual reinterpretations of hell, the contributions examine how religious meaning is constructed, embodied, transformed, and transmitted through artistic practice.

The collected articles analyse visual art, ritual performance, music, poetry, and popular religiosity as sites where power, memory, and belief converge. Several contributions foreground the spatial and material dimensions of the sacred, investigating murals, ritual corridors, hand-waving sacrifices, and vernacular devotional structures as frameworks through which communities negotiate identity and resilience. Others address narrative and metaphor, revealing how theological concepts and cosmological imaginaries are rearticulated in modern and contemporary artistic languages. Across traditions and geographies, this volume highlights the capacity of artistic expression to mediate between the sacred and the secular, the institutional and the vernacular, the historical and the contemporary. By combining theological reflection, cultural analysis, and aesthetic inquiry, this Special Issue advances an interdisciplinary understanding of how art continues to shape, question, and renew spiritual experience in a globalized world.