Realms of Reality in de VU ART SCIENCE gallery

Religion is a hot topic. In a world marked by global conflicts, digitalization and a rapidly shifting climate, we are looking for a bigger story to hold on to. At the same time, many of these stories are being used to create division and hierarchy. In Realms of Reality artists, researchers and visitors explore how different belief systems – ancient, conflicting or emerging – shape our reality. With an transdisciplinary approach, Realms of Reality is seeking the possibility to give room to the variety of beliefs rooted in the concept that we are all connected to a bigger universe, that we have to take care of.

The exhibition is accompanied by the essay The Freedom of Myth, written by Jasmijn T.E. Mol. She is a curator, art historian and researcher with a special interest in trans-historical 
and paradoxical concepts, such as the use of spiritual practices in our current digital era. In her text, she pleads for religion as myths, as the myth is not a dogma but a maybe. 

The artworks of Suzanne Plomp, Marcos Kueh & Ritvik Khushu, Fiona Lutjenhuis, and Simone Albers, offer portals to parallel worldviews and invite us to step into shifting realms of reality. 

Unending metamorphosis 
Inspired by altarpieces and the study of anatomy, Suzanne Plomp draws ‘altars for the body’, in which the mutable nature of the body takes centre stage and human and animal forms seem to merge into one another. Plomp builds on Spinoza’s notion of substantia, the idea that everything in nature is made of the same divine substance. 

Colonization and decolonization 
The installation by Ritvik Khushu and Marcos Kueh reflects on the arrival of Christianity and colonialism in India. Heavenly Bodies, reveals how multiple religious, colonial, and social systems intersect and affect the ways in which Indian deities and contemporary women are perceived. 

Sectarian extremes
The hallucinating imagery of Fiona Lutjenhuis show how human longing for belonging can spill into sectarian extremes. Through her art, she opens the door for a more expansive 
psyche, that welcomes the magical and the intuitive as part of everyday life, restoring a sense of connection with the natural world around us.Interconnectedness and interdependence 
With the installation, Simone Albers shifts the attention from the promise of an afterlife in religion to the significance of life in the present. In Snakes and Ladders (Cycles and Webs) she transforms the linear structure of the well-known board game into a cyclical form, emphasizing interconnectedness and interdependence in our existence.

In a series of ART SCIENCE dialogues, both researchers from various disciplines liketheology, philosophy and natural sciences, and visitors are invited to share their reflections
on the artworks. The public program will be organised in collaboration with 3D, the dialogue stage of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.