Thinking Through the Visual Arts

This colloquium is part of Thinking Through the Arts, a two-day series that gathers emerging scholars to discuss the interplay between the arts, the world around us, and our inner lives. Sponsored by Veritas Forum and Regent College, these events are free and open to the public.

ABOUT THE EVENT

Join us at Regent College (Room 10) to hear from emerging scholars in the field of visual art as they explore the interplay among artistic creation, sight, and spirituality. Three 30-minute presentations will be followed by questions and discussion.

• Snow Yunxue Fu, Making Art in the Phygital (Physical + Digital) Space
• Christina Carnes Ananias, The Illuminating Spirit: Seeing the Trinity in Olafur Eilasson’s Beauty
• Jonathan Anderson, Conceptual Art, Theology, and Re-Presentation

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Snow Yunxue Fu is a new media artist. Working with imaging technologies such as 3D Simulation, AR, XR, and the Metaverse, she creates computer-rendered images, moving images, interactive projects, installations, etc., and merges sociological, anthropological, philosophical, and interdisciplinary explorations into the universal aesthetic and definitive nature of the techno sublime. Her practice is rooted in a post-photographic framework, researching societal relationships with imaging and VR experiences within a web 2.0 and now 3.0 context. Her practice also echoes the investigations of historical Chinese and Western painters who peered into the implications of our capacity to experience the sublime in nature. Please visit her website at snowyunxuefu.com.

Christina Carnes Ananias is the Lilly Endowment Faculty Fellow in the School of Theology and Christian Ministry at Belmont University, where her research and teaching focuses on bringing ancient theology together with the visual arts and image studies. Having worked with artists and students for over a decade, Christina taught various art history courses at Charleston Southern University before pursuing her doctoral work at Duke University. She now speaks throughout the United States on Christianity and the arts. In recent writing, she weaves together Christology, late modern philosophy, and the paintings of the French modernists. An example of her work can be found in Contemporary Art and the Church (IVP, 2017).

Jonathan A. Anderson is the Eugene and Jan Peterson Associate Professor of Theology and the Arts at Regent College. Previously, he was the Postdoctoral Associate of Theology and the Visual Arts at Duke University and an Associate Professor of Art at Biola University. His scholarship explores the interrelations of art history, theology, and religious studies, with a particular focus on modern and contemporary art. He is the author (with William Dyrness) of Modern Art and the Life of a Culture: The Religious Impulses of Modernism (IVP Academic, 2016) and The (In)visibilities of Religion in Contemporary Art (University of Notre Dame Press, forthcoming). He has authored many articles, including in Artforum, Image, Religion and the Arts, and The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. Anderson has a PhD from King’s College London and an MFA from California State University Long Beach. Please visit his website at jonathan-anderson.com.