Preventing religion becoming a taboo subject within Fine Art
Approaching this task, I found it difficult to think how my role as a lecturer in Fine Art in related to religious belief or faith. My engagement with students is frequently conversational and led by the subjects they have chosen for their artwork. Subject matter is often personal, concerned with students’ experiences, identity or political ideology, yet religious belief almost never comes up, leading me to wonder why this might be.
Advance HE data states that ‘among students who disclosed information, just over half of students (50.2%) reported that they had a religion or belief and 49.8% reported that they had no religion or belief’. (Codiroli Mcmaster, 2020) UAL data shows that of students studying Fine Art courses at CCW, of those that disclosed information, approximately 29% reported they had a religion or belief, compared to over 70% that did not, suggesting that significantly less students with religious beliefs are selecting Fine Art subjects.
Religious identity will also intersect with other identity factors such as ethnicity and this may be one of many factors that influence students’ choice of degree subject. The Advance HE data looks further into the relationship between religion and choice of degree subject matter- reporting a lower uptake of non-SET (Science, Engineering and Technology) degrees amongst students with a declared religion.
Generalisations about contemporary art within popular culture and media may also impact whether students and their families feel that Fine Art as a subject aligns with their religious beliefs. During the 90’s and early 2000’s, the ‘YBA’ generation of artists were frequently featured in the press with provocative, offensive and often ‘anti-religious’ art. This may have fueled a perception that religion is a taboo subject or incompatible with contemporary art.
‘The open expression of religiosity in a contemporary artwork was usually regarded as kitsch or bad taste, inviting quick aesthetic judgments that distinguished between high art and popular culture.’ (Alexandrova, 2017)
While the data shows a clearly reduced number of religious students selecting the subject, there remains almost 1/3 of students declaring a faith, so it is apparent that this is not commonly discussed within the studio environment.
Students might be reticent to reveal their religious beliefs within a majority-secular environment for fear of being taken less seriously. Rekis (2023) describes this as ‘epistemic injustice’, where the student receives (or fears) a ‘deflation of credibility when the hearer harbors a negative identity prejudice toward the speaker’.
When I think of the small number of conversations I have had with students about their religious beliefs, they have all been concerned with how their ideas are incompatible with the religious traditions they have been raised with. As a white academic within a secular institution who is not visibly religious, it is possible that students might assume I would respond favorably to this perspective.
While faith (for many) is a private matter, in much Fine Art practice there is a crossover between the private and the public, with students frequently exploring highly personal subjects. Unless students have proactively raised it, I have avoided asking about faith in order to respect their privacy, whilst unintendedly restricting its relevance. It is important to prevent religion being seen as ‘taboo’, in order that students can fully express their own positionality. I will give further thought to how this might be done in a sensitive and inclusive manner.
References
Alexandrova, A 2017, Breaking Resemblance : The Role of Religious Motifs in Contemporary Art, Fordham University Press, New York. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [12 May 2025].
Codiroli Mcmaster, N. / Advance HE (2020) Research Insight: Religion and Belief in UK Higher Education. Available at: https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets.creode.advancehe-document-manager/documents/advance-he/AdvHE_Religion%20and%20belief_1606302802.pdf (Accessed: May 12th 2025).
Rekis J (2023). Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account. Hypatia 38, 779–800.
UAL (2025) Student Profiles by Characteristic. Available at: dashboards.arts.ac.uk (Accessed: 12th May 2025).
UAL CCW Fine Art students (2024-25) organised by religion. Source: UAL (2025) Student Profiles by Characteristic. Available at: dashboards.arts.ac.uk (Accessed: 12th May 2025).
I appreciate your awareness of the fine line between respecting students’ privacy and unintentionally reinforcing religion as a taboo topic. At the same time, I wonder if there’s more we can do as educators to gently challenge the dominant secular lens. Perhaps, rather than waiting for students to raise faith-based perspectives, could we create more intentional prompts or moments within the curriculum that validate a wider range of worldviews – including religious ones – without forcing disclosure?
Thanks for your comment Elisenda- that’s a good suggestion. Perhaps I can find some suitable artworks that reflect religious ideas to use as reference points in order to allow it to sit within the studio conversation as a first step.
Thanks again Claire, for taking a clear sighted approach to your own teaching/research/education context with so sharp an eye and calm a mind; how do you do this?! I’d be curious about the means by which you’ve cultivated this level of clarity and balance. Again, you are so clearly right. The facts and figures bear this out. Again, very good references, thanks for sharing these. So, the probable reputational factors, or personalities, that define “fine art” and; secularism as assumed by the institution – are each normative positions that are only broken (open) when directly challenged or modelled otherwise. So we think about decolonising the religion and belief assumptions within our curricula. And perhaps asking why faith need be a culturally defined “private thing”; of course in Western contexts this is historically influenced and thus affected in concrete ways by both ‘Confession’ and the Reformation’s reinvention of interiority, and accountability. Hence this whole post…hinges on your final sentence, the drama of which I have not before witnessed. Brilliant ending to the post. Which we know, is a beginning…and one I very much look forward to hearing about, discussing or even reflecting on with you if you have the time or inclination: how to do this, indeed, in a sensitive and inclusive manner. Cliffhanger:)
Thank you for the thoughtful comment Tim. I’ve been thinking more on Elisenda’s comment and how faith might be integrated into the curriculum, which might help to disrupt the ‘normative position’ of secularity within Fine Art that you describe. This reminded me of one of our earlier readings on silencing, where Malcolm (2021) states that ‘a non-inclusive syllabus on certain topics alienates students from the discussion, leading to disengagement and self-quieting’. Clearly I need to build up my repertoire of Fine Art references to include more artworks that directly refer to the artists’ religious beliefs! An ongoing project for me to begin…
Malcolm, F. (2021), Silencing and freedom of speech in UK higher education. Br. Educ. Res. J., 47: 520-538. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3661
My experience resonated with your observation that religious belief rarely surfaces in student conversations, even when deeply personal themes are being explored. It’s important to notice the invisible boundaries we might unintentionally draw in the learning environment, especially when it comes to faith. And it’s a sharp finding about how popular culture and media might have shaped students’ (and our) assumptions about what is “acceptable” to express in their practice. This indeed needs a sensitive while inclusive manner, not only respecting privacy but also ensuring that no topic, including religion, is implicitly off-limits. I like the actionable idea of building a repertoire of references that include the discourse on religious beliefs – something that I’ll also be mindful of, thanks for this thought-provoking post.