Religion & Cult/ volume 106

Some forces shape human experience long before language begins to define them—belief, ritual, devotion, fear, transcendence. Religion and cult, though often separated by legitimacy or scale, share a common architecture: systems of meaning constructed around the unseen. They organize the intangible, give form to the invisible, and offer frameworks through which individuals attempt to understand their place within something larger than themselves.

In this special edition of Collect Art, we approach Religion & Cult not as fixed categories, but as fluid territories—overlapping, contested, and continuously reimagined. Rather than drawing boundaries between the sacred and the profane, the institutional and the marginal, this issue explores how belief manifests across contemporary artistic practices, and how these manifestations reflect the complexities of our time.

Religion has long been a source of visual language: icons, symbols, altars, relics, and rituals that translate faith into form. These structures are not merely aesthetic; they are carriers of collective memory, power, and identity. Yet in a contemporary context, their meanings are neither stable nor universally shared. Artists today engage with religious imagery not only to preserve or honor it, but also to question, deconstruct, and transform it. What happens when a symbol is removed from its original context? When ritual becomes gesture? When belief becomes material?

At the same time, the notion of the cult introduces another dimension—one that is often associated with devotion outside accepted norms, with systems of belief that exist on the margins or in opposition to dominant structures. The term itself carries tension: fascination and suspicion, intimacy and control. In this issue, we consider the cult not only as a social phenomenon, but as an artistic condition. In this space, meaning is intensely constructed, where repetition becomes ritual, and where communities form around shared, often unspoken, understandings.

Across the works presented in Volume 106, artists navigate these territories with sensitivity and critical awareness. Some return to sacred iconography, reworking it through contemporary materials and perspectives to create new visual theologies that resonate with present-day concerns. Others focus on ritual itself—its gestures, its rhythms, its capacity to create connection or impose structure. In these works, ritual is not necessarily tied to doctrine; it becomes a way of marking time, of creating meaning within uncertainty.

There is also a recurring engagement with the body as a site of belief. The body participates in ritual, carries symbols, enacts devotion. It becomes both subject and medium—marked, adorned, disciplined, or liberated. Through performance, sculpture, photography, and painting, artists explore how belief systems inhabit and shape physical experience. The body becomes a threshold between the internal and the external, the personal and the collective.

Materiality plays a crucial role in these explorations. Objects are not neutral; they are imbued with significance through use, context, and intention. A simple element—fabric, metal, thread, stone—can become sacred through repetition or association. Artists in this issue engage with materials as vessels of meaning, transforming them into contemporary relics, altars, or offerings. These works often exist in a liminal space, where the distinction between art object and ritual object begins to dissolve.

In a world increasingly shaped by technology and global connectivity, belief itself is evolving. Digital spaces give rise to new forms of community, new rituals, new systems of devotion. The boundaries between reality and simulation blur, and with them, how we construct meaning. Some artists in this edition engage directly with these shifts, creating works that reflect the emergence of digital mythologies and virtual forms of worship. Others respond by returning to the tactile, the physical, the embodied—seeking grounding in material presence.

Perhaps what emerges most strongly across Volume 106 is the idea of the sacred as something not fixed, but continuously produced. It exists not only in established institutions or inherited traditions, but in the gestures, objects, and spaces we create. It can be found in repetition, in attention, in the act of making itself. Artists become, in this sense, both observers and participants—constructing systems of meaning while also questioning them.

As you move through this edition, consider where belief resides in your own experience. Not only in formal practices or inherited traditions, but in the habits, values, and rituals that shape your daily life. What do you return to? What do you hold as meaningful? Where do you find connection, and where do you encounter resistance?

Collect Art Volume 106 does not seek to define Religion or Cult. Instead, it offers a space where these ideas can be explored, expanded, and reimagined—where the sacred is not given, but continually made.