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. On view from April 4 – August 23, 2026, Speaking in Tongues 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, the presentation features artists engaging with embodied and ecstatic forms of expression, ritual, and language. Speaking in Tongues celebrates the spiritual as a vehicle 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 approaches her FSA residency as both a curator and spiritual practitioner, using it as an opportunity to deepen and develop conversations that have been central to her recent research around the studies of glossolalia, esoteric expression, religious ritual, embodied translation, and the effects of empire on spiritual formation. She is particularly interested in exploring first-person experiences of spiritual possession and divine communion as they manifest across various religious, artistic, and cultural expressions within the city of Charleston and the diasporas that call it home. Such research represents an attempt to allow new definitions to emerge for what we understand as faith, and what we name as Spirit, as Source, as God.