Religion and Faith: The Missing Index of Inequality in Culture and the Arts

Creative Muslim Women is the short title for an ambitious programme of research and practice funded by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (2017-2021). For the first known time in a major grant-funded project, religion and faith were placed centre-stage in understanding experiences of inequality in culture and the arts. In this Cultural Commons piece I will introduce the co-curated exhibition, ‘Beyond Faith: Muslim Women Artists Today’ (The Whitworth, 2019-2020), which marked the culmination of the wider project. ‘Beyond Faith’ was shown alongside ‘Four Corners of One Cloth: Textiles from the Islamic World’, and featured five Muslim women artists who were trained, lived or practiced in North-West England: Robina Akhter Ullah, Shabana Baig, Fatimah Fagihassan, Aida Foroutan and Usarae Gul. It was a mixed media exhibition that included textiles, mosaic and woodwork, besides painting and performance. Accompanied by a series of short films made by Ricardo Vilela about the artists, the exhibition considered their different pathways within the creative sectors, and reflections on their creative practice in relation to the historic collection. The exhibition run was extended twice and reached over 200,000 visitors. Here I want to discuss the contribution of Beyond Faith in the wider context of decolonising museum practices in Manchester, regional museums of the UK, and Western institutions. I suggest that treating religion and faith seriously, especially minority religions such as Islam that have been ‘Othered’ in Western contexts (Said, 1978), is a significant dimension to decolonising museum practices.