A Sufi musician in Senegal. A Buddhist dancer in Bangkok. A Bāul singer in Bangladesh. Each reaches for something beyond the visible world through artistic performance. But do they experience something genuinely spiritual in the act of creation? And if so, how does that experience connect to the mystical traditions they inherited? Dr. Francesco Piraino, Tenure track researcher in Sociology and director of the Center for Comparative Studies of Civilizations and Spiritualities (), leads EXTRA — a project that investigates the relationship between contemporary arts and mysticism across three religious traditions.
Art as Spiritual Practice
EXTRA takes a socio-anthropological and material approach, examining how artists and their media engage with religion. The research spans the contemporary contexts of Islam (Senegal, Morocco, Egypt), Hinduism and Islam in the Bāul traditions of India and Bangladesh, and Buddhism (Taipei, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Bangkok, Japan). Piraino and his team focus on visual arts, dance, and music, asking how artists experience religion through performance, how they represent religious doctrines and mystical consciousness in their work, and what their relationship is with religious communities. The methods are immersive: ethnographic participation in artistic events and interviews with artists across multiple countries.
A Symposium, an Exhibition, a Concert
EXTRA’s dissemination plan includes a symposium held in Venice, an edited volume or special journal issue, and a public exhibition and concert featuring global religious artists. A dedicated website will serve as a long-term platform for exploring the relationship between religion and the arts. Piraino and his team’s work could show that the dynamics of enchantment and re-enchantment in contemporary societies are playing out not in temples or churches alone, but on stages, in galleries, and through the hands of artists who may be the unrecognized mystics of our time.