Description
Event Date: Saturday, December 12, 2026 at 5:00 PM
[BANGKOK ART BIENNALE 2026] – a conference by Remy Jarry Co-curator of Angels & Mara, the 5th edition of the Bangkok Art Biennale
Angels in Art History:
From Heaven to Contemporary Culture
“This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past.
Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe
which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.”
Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History, 1940
Echoing Angels and Mara, the 5th edition of the Bangkok Art Biennale, this lecture explores the
place and significance of angels in art history. Across spiritual traditions, angels and other
celestial beings have taken a remarkable variety of forms. Yet, beyond their differences, they
have long offered artists a unique means of giving form to the invisible. Representations of
angels have also allowed for greater creative freedom than depictions of God or the divine itself,
which are often subject to theological constraints. Their fluid nature has enabled them to be
imagined, embodied, transformed, and reinvented, opening up possibilities for artistic
innovation. From the earliest devotional images to contemporary art, angels have continually
evolved alongside changing beliefs, aesthetic conventions and cultural contexts. Their
appearance and symbolism have shifted over time, yet their presence endures, with renewed
momentum in today’s visual arts and popular culture.
Tracing key moments in the representation of angels across periods and cultures, the lecture asks
why these divine messengers and celestial intermediaries continue to fascinate contemporary
artists, and what their enduring presence reveals about our relationship with the sacred—and
with ourselves. Beyond their historical representations, angels invite us to consider whether we
are witnessing the emergence of a new angelology, in which they no longer belong exclusively to
the realm of the divine but become figures through which we negotiate our anxieties, desires,
histories, and visions of the future. Angels do not merely look down upon humanity from above;
they also offer a vantage point from which we can reflect on ourselves and envision worlds
beyond our own. Bangkok, the "City of Angels," provides a particularly compelling setting in
which to revisit these celestial figures and gain a fresh perspective on their enduring relevance.
Speaker: Dr Rémy Jarry, Co-curator of Angels & Mara, the 5th edition of the Bangkok Art
Biennale.
Short bio: https://www.bkkartbiennale.com/team/remy-jarry
Image: Sun Yuan & Peng Yu, Angel, 2008. Photo: © Courtesy of the artists and Galleria
Continua.
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