Exhibition: NOTHING TOO BEAUTIFUL FOR THE GODS

Fondation Opale gave carte blanche to French curator Jean-Hubert Martin, who, through some 60 works, offers an insight into the rich and extravagant diversity of spiritual and artistic practices.

Art has always been a powerful means of expressing faith, gratitude and the quest for transcendence. Through sculptures, paintings, altars, songs, dances and rituals, believers from diverse cultures have sought to honor their gods or spirits and connect with a higher spiritual dimension. For those who do not follow a particular deity, artistic creation becomes a search for meaning and a union with a supreme entity.

In three parts, this exhibition reveals how these practices continue to nourish contemporary art, for which the boundaries between disciplines and cultures are increasingly blurred. It begins with altars from cultures all over the world, reconstituted in a museum context, followed by artists born in the first half of the twentieth century, often misunderstood and sometimes marginalised, who refer directly to their beliefs and claim this dual belonging to religion and modern art. Lastly, the exhibition presents a new generation of artists who have lost their complexes regarding colonisation, and who are campaigning for the recognition of their cultures, particularly indigenous ones, and the enhancement of religious aspects, whether dogmatic, shamanic or animist.

NOTHING TOO BEAUTIFUL FOR THE GODS thus deals with the place of the sacred and the sacred being in our societies. The exhibition proposes a reflection on the link between art, spirituality and culture, and seeks to lift the veil on the visual expressions of Aboriginal cultures, often ignored in the context of contemporary art, and to reveal their current relevance.