Mediations on the Sacred: Ritual and Contemporary Practice

Why It Matters

The discussion spotlights museum practice shifts toward decolonizing collections and integrating ritual, ecology and community agency into display and conservation—changes that could reshape repatriation policies, curatorial ethics and audience engagement. These ideas have direct implications for institutions holding contested cultural materials and for how public rituals are incorporated into exhibitions.

Summary

An MA curating panel at St Mary the Strand convened curators and artists to discuss Gala Poris Kim’s exhibition Searching for Lost Rain, which presents two works made from artifacts dredged from a sacred cenote in Mexico and material from the Peabody Museum. Poris Kim’s sculpture, made with copal resin and Peabody dust, invites visitors to pour rainwater as a symbolic return of objects’ spiritual provenance, while a companion letter to the museum argues for ritual reintroduction and care. Speakers—Lotty Johnson, Natalyia Valencia and Jen Ellis—framed the works within broader debates about conservation, deaccession, colonial provenance and the ethics of exhibiting sacred objects across sites. The panel explored how exhibitions can preserve agency and sacredness while enabling interdisciplinary, site-responsive practices and visitor participation.

Original Description

Panel discussion with Lotte Johnson, Jennifer Ellis and Natalia Valencia Arango

The exhibition Searching for Lost Rain (St Mary le Strand and Strand Aldwych: 27th May – 4th June) serves as a point of departure to explore the lives of cultural artefacts which have been removed from and presented outside of their original contexts. The display itself will encourage members of the public to engage with these ideas by interacting with Gala Porras-Kim’s artworks.

Focusing on spirituality, ritual practice and culture, leading scholars and curators will present and discuss emerging scholarship and their experiences surrounding presentations of the sacred within institutional and alternative cultural spaces. Drawing from their various practices in ecology, transcultural dialogue, and cultural histories, this panel will explore these complex intersections in light of an ethical engagement with these artefacts.

This panel will discuss how exhibitions and display practices can successfully exhibit these objects across various sites, while maintaining agency and sacredness. The discussion endeavours to advance scholarly debates on this urgent issue for contemporary curatorial practice.

This event is organised by the MA Curating: St Mary le Strand and Strand Aldwych Exhibition Team. The exhibition Searching for Lost Rain is on view at St Mary le Strand from the 27 May to 4 June.

Speakers:

Lotte Johnson is currently curator at the Barbican. Lotte’s recent projects include a retrospective of Beatriz González (2026), Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art (2024, co-curated with Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam) and Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics (2022), as well as new commissions by artists including Citra Sasmita (2025), Toyin Ojih Odutola (2020), SERAFINE1369 (2019), Yto Barrada (2018) and Bedwyr Williams (2016). Working from a feminist perspective, Lotte’s work often focuses on interdisciplinary practices and transcultural dialogues. She previously worked at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.’

Jennifer Ellis is an acclaimed international curator. Jenn’s curatorial practice investigates intersections of contemporary art, space and context, with a focus on themes of time, ecology, heritage and place through the lens of global artistic dialogue. Having curated over 100 projects globally, Jenn founded Apsara Studio in 2021, a curatorial studio and project space in London, facilitating artistic experimentation and exchange. Jenn is equally the Artistic Director of TERRA, a monumental site-responsive exhibition across historic sites around the UNESCO-heritage vineyards of Burgundy.

Natalia Valencia Arango is a Colombian curator based in London. Current projects include Gala Porras-Kim at Museo de Arte Moderno in Medellín (2026); Visión Nocturna by Pablo Vargas Lugo at Fundación Marso in Madrid (2026); El Hilo, a monograph of Jaime Gili published by This Side Up, Madrid (2026). She has served as Associate Curator for Estancia Femsa Casa Barragán in Mexico City and has curated projects at Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in Mexico City, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, CAPC in Bordeaux, AIT in Tokyo, among others. She has worked as editor of Terremoto Magazine in Mexico City, South as A State of Mind in Athens, and as Fellow Researcher at Centre Pompidou in Paris. She was on the advisory committee for the 2022 Sydney Biennale and was nominated for ICI’s Curatorial Vision Award in New York. She holds an M.A. in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London.