Lieke Wijnia: Galleries of Material Religion

Lieke is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Art and Society at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen, the Netherlands, and works as a freelance curator. She is the author of "Resonating Sacralities: Dynamics Between Art and Religion in Postsecular Netherlands" and "Beyond the Return of Religion: Art and the Postsecular." She co-edited with others the volume "Museums as Ritual Sites, Civilizing Rituals Reconsidered" and the (open-access) "Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Heritage in Contemporary Europe." She previously curated the exhibitions "Mary Magdalene" in 2021 and "The Genesis of Science" in 2024 at Museum Catharijneconvent, and edited their accompanying publications.In this conversation, Lieke and I explore how contemporary art engages spirituality and can function as a form of material religion. We look at the challenges artists face in expressing the sacred within a largely secular culture, how migration shapes religious imagery, and what it means to curate exhibitions that take spiritual themes seriously. We also reflect on how the sacred continues to surface within modern visual culture.