“What will it take to create more unity amongst humanity?”
This question is at the core of “Portraits in Faith: Seeing the Other,” the exhibition curated by Gina Alicea, a Lab fine arts teacher and director of the Corvus Gallery, with artist Daniel Epstein. The question was first posed at Lab’s Corvus Gallery in 2022, then at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2024. This October, that question was posed in Vatican City.
On Oct. 21, Ms. Alicea and Mr. Epstein held a joint press conference with the Vatican Dicastery for Communication as a part of the Emotions to Generate Change program.
Mr. Epstein’s original “Portraits in Faith” project was rooted in spirituality and understanding — the ways different people understand a higher power and the journeys that brought them there. But since its first exhibition was at Lab, a secular school, its message was expanded beyond faith and to the concept of the “other” as a whole.
According to Ms. Alicea, this expansion ultimately inspired a writer for Vatican News, Sister Bernadette Reis, to try to bring the exhibit to Vatican City.
“Because you’ve broadened the scope from just faith to being about accepting everyone on this planet no matter what their journey is, it really broadened the scope of what was being covered,” Ms. Alicea said.
Ms. Alicea and Mr. Epstein are currently working with two religious organizations that have shown interest in bringing the full exhibit to Europe: House of One, an institute in Berlin that contains a mosque, synagogue and church together; and Religions for Peace in Rome.
“Religions for peace are very enthusiastic after the press conference,” Ms. Alicea said. “There’s a lot of spiritual leaders in Rome from different faiths, and they wanted us to bring them together and start there.”
Despite having spoken about her exhibits at many conferences before, being invited to one at the Vatican felt like a particular honor to Ms. Alicea.
I’ve been curating exhibitions for 30 years,” Ms. Alicea said, “and you never anticipate how the work you’re doing is going to grow and who’s going to like it and who’s going to invite you to come in and share it.”
