We are all in this alone

detail of installation

excerpt from the text "Precarious Spirituality: Transfer and Continuum" by Elke Krasny

Conventional historiographical narratives or theoretical analysis of abstract
art, minimal art, conceptual art, or post-conceptual art leaves little room for
consideration with regard to the dimension of the spiritual. For a long time the
religious overtones of the spiritual prevented its entry into art theoretical discourse.
Etymologically, spiritual shares a common root with spirit. The Latin word spiritus
opens up a wide semantic field: breath, breathing, life, soul, mind, enthusiasm,
courage, pride and poetic work. Via Medieval Latin’s use of the word spiritualis,
the semantic field of the spiritual was narrowed down and firmly connected with
the religious, the sacred, the clerical or the ministerial. It is safe to assume that it
is this firm connection with the religious that posed one of the main challenges for
the spiritual’s ascent in the artistic production of modernity, post-modernity, or
even today’s late modernity. Yet, We are all in this alone, the collaborative work of
Hristina Ivanoska and Yane Calovski presented at the Venice Biennale, knowingly
and deliberately enters the complex potentialities of the spiritual. They open up
the question of what it is that carries faith into art. They open up the question of
what it is that carries faith into life.