Summary: In my paper I will address factors involved in transforming emotions into physicality and practices that are associated with the observance. Through personal observations evolving from my art practice a diverse range of expressions of religious beliefs, religious communication and aesthetic expressions of belief in contemporary Europe, the US, Japan and Australia are explored. People address uncertainty, fear, illness, death, grief and the desire to predict the future through objects and decorations that help to give stability in a life that is characterised by unforeseeable changes. Principles of representation, and the dimensions of these objects’ aesthetics are evaluated within their socio-historical context. Claude Levi Strauss once singled out certain things as ‘good to think with’. Objects, colours, compositions and associated rituals begin to unravel when the processes by which they come into being are scrutinized closely. This is especially so when the things in question are put into specific contexts, such as into altars and shrines – thus when they become ‘talkative’. I will discuss objects as ‘cultural actors’ and describe how objects and rituals epitomize and concentrate complex relationships into deep emotional experiences. Religious communication can be seen and experienced outside traditional settings and objects used in religious ‘installations’ are witnesses to human emotion that struggle to fit into a world that is dominated by science, technology and logic. These installations are aesthetic, autonomous and individual constructions that visualize artistic principles. Their language speaks to us about what we are and how we deal with our inner world.
