Post-Secular Art for a Post-Secular Age: Stational Installations of the Via Dolorosa in Western cities

Abstract

Three installations of the “Stations of the Cross,” established as stational urban exhibitions across London, Washington, D.C., and New York in 2016, 2017, and 2018 (respectively), are the focus of this article, which examines the significance of the Via Dolorosa in Western culture and the role that visual media embodying this sacred topography have played in pre-modern and contemporary Western societies. It studies the contemporary installations in relation to sixteenth-century trend of superimposing the Via Dolorosa upon Western towns, and shows that the contemporary installations used the paradigm of the fourteen stations to contextualize themes that are entirely unrelated to Jerusalem or the Gospels but are highly significant within twenty-first-century Western cultural discourse. It discusses the way in which these installations bridged the gap between religious and secular worldviews in a post-secular age, studying them as a form of post-secular art.