The exhibition’s title, Speaking in Tongues, references a term commonly associated with the Pentecostal church and said to describe someone who becomes so consumed by their encounter with the Holy Spirit that they respond in indecipherable languages and uncanny movements. While language, like religion, has often been a tool of colonization and erasure, Speaking in Tongues points to mother tongues that evade capture, honoring those whose communities, native languages, and sacred rituals have been systemically riven by colonialism.

While recalling the ceremonies, altars, and scriptures common to a spiritual life, the artworks featured in Speaking in Tongues enhance our understanding of the sacred beyond—and often in contrast to—spaces like the church, temple, synagogue, and mosque. In celebrating forms of knowledge and expression that have traditionally existed outside of art historical textbooks and museum walls, Speaking in Tongues—together with its catalogue and related programs—expands and deepens the field in timely and meaningful ways that illuminate the spiritual as a method for remembering, storying, and living in this world together.