↳ Exhibitions

Mia Bencun at BPA

October 23, 2020

Artist: Mia Bencun

Exhibition title: This cycle is entirely godless

Venue: BPA, Cologne, Germany

Date: September 25 – October 11, 2020

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and BPA, Cologne

Throughout history, humans widely sought the intervention of divine powers to understand their fate. Certain individuals created divinatory artifacts in an attempt to communicate with ancestors, spirits and gods in order to obtain insight into human quandaries.

The term “divination” describes efforts to foretell future events or to discover hidden knowledge by supernatural means. The legacy of such efforts is evident in works that display an especially diverse range of artistic expression. The style of the religious figures and objects reflect a collaborative endeavour, joining the skill and creative talent of artists with the expertise of ritual specialists.

This style is often mirrored and utilized in modern RPGs as to invoke a sense of religious importance or solemnity.

The aesthetic qualities of the works in this exhibition represent an essential dimension of their original role as instruments designed to further the immersion into divinatory quests in the realm of gaming. The abstract forms and objects most often act as bridges to a magical or spiritual realm.

„Whatever the form, all divinatory practises reveal the human quest for a larger context of meaning, a means by which to understand and respond to the many faces of suffering and uncertainty. Inherent in all these practises is the assumption – or faith – “that the world order in its totality is, could, and should be a meaningful ‘cosmos’.”

John Pemberton III: Divination in Sub-Saharan in LaGamma, Alisa: Art and Oracle: African Art and Rituals of Divination. Singapore. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 2000.