Amanda Sroka is a curator whose 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. She is the Senior Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, where she is organizing the forthcoming Speaking in Tongues exhibition, which 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 features 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. 

For this program, Sroka will provide a preview into the exhibition, along with its programming and related catalogue, which features original scholarship and interpretive frameworks that cultivate newfound connections among 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.