Art as a Conduit to the Spiritual, a lecture by Amanda Sroka, senior curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Sroka's creative work focuses on global histories of contemporary art with a specialized interest in interdisciplinary practices that operate at the intersections of our personal, political and material worlds. At the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, she is organizing the forthcoming Speaking in Tongues, an exhibition that features an intergenerational and international group of contemporary artists who embrace the role of art as a conduit to the spiritual.

Exploring and expanding notions of the sacred and the divine, Speaking in Tongues presents works by artists engaging with embodied and ecstatic forms of expression, ritual, and language. At a moment when religion is increasingly weaponized as an instrument to divide, Speaking in Tongues celebrates the spiritual as a tool for survival, kinship and communion – centering the work of Indigenous and diasporic artists from the Global South to trace shared connections across geographies, cultures and time.

Sroka will provide a preview into the exhibition, along with its programming and related catalogue, which features original scholarship and interpretive frameworks for connecting the studies of contemporary art, and religious, Indigenous and linguistic studies. Together, they serve as platforms for diverse communities to explore spirituality in the arts in ways that cultivate empathy, understanding and connection.

This program is organized by the Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts.

Curator Bio:

At ICA LA, Sroka has curated solo presentations dedicated to the work of Samar Al Summary, Carmen Argote, Jackie Castillo, Chris Emile and No)One. Art House, Liz Hernández, Will Rawls, Christine Sun Kim, Trýõng Công Tùng, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra and Alberta Whittle. She has also contributed to Carl Cheng: Nature Never Loses (forthcoming 2026), Raven Sanchez: Así Sea/So Be It (forthcoming 2026), Scientia Sexualis (2024), Barbara T. Smith: Proof (2023), and Milford Graves: Fundamental Frequency (2023). She was previously associate curator of contemporary art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art where she organized solo projects with Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Martine Syms, Zoe Leonard, Senga Nengudi, Marisa Merz, Yael Bartana and Jitish Kallat, as well as group exhibitions such as Fault Lines: Contemporary Abstraction by Artists from South Asia. Prior to that, Sroka worked at the New Museum in New York.