Illuminations

Illuminations brings together five film and video works that explore gestures, objects and spaces that shape or express belief. The title refers both to the light generated by projected images in a darkened gallery and to metaphorical states of enlightenment attainable through faith.

Belief – be it spiritual, philosophical, cultural or scientific – is a means through which individuals recognise and make sense of the world. It can be resolute or instinctive, questioning or blind, reasoned or irrational, individual or collective. In this exhibition, artists Lida Abdul, Dan Acostioaei, Sanford Biggers, caraballo-farman and Valérie Mréjen explore how belief is articulated through places, symbols, words and actions. Their work captures incidents and gestures that relate to rituals of commitment and revelation. Viewed through the media of video and film, belief is presented as an intrinsic feature of daily life, which can provoke reflection and transformation. Through a range of strategies, including documentary and observation, the artists examine the position of the individual within communal frameworks that order moral and social behaviour.

Illuminations at Tate Modern: Light cast on the power of religion
Five intriguing video works at Tate Modern focus on contemporary faiths, but why, asks Alastair Sooke, is Islam not among them?

Of all the issues determining the make-up of modern Britain, one of the most crucial is surely the question of faith. So an exhibition probing the nature of belief is a promising and timely prospect.

Tate Modern's 'Illuminations' consists of five short video works exploring the path to enlightenment in various cultures

Illuminations at Tate Modern does just that: the second in a series of four related exhibitions in the riverside Level 2 gallery, it consists of five short video works exploring the path to enlightenment in various cultures. Belief is a subject occasionally tackled by contemporary artists such as Bill Viola and Mark Wallinger. But one of the criteria for this current series of exhibitions is that they must feature artists who are not widely known.

The most familiar name in Illuminations is probably the Afghan Lida Abdul, whose work featured at the Venice Biennale in 2005. But among the other artists, none of whom is British, two have yet to find a dealer.

As you enter Illuminations, the first piece you see is Contours of Staying by Caraballo-Farman, two artists who have worked together since 2001. The film focuses on a group of practitioners of Falun Gong - a meditative system based on Buddhism that was outlawed by the Chinese government in 1999 - as they sit in protest outside the Chinese consulate in New York during one of the fiercest blizzards to hit the city since the 1940s.

If nothing else, the film functions as a study in endurance. Hunched on the ice-bound street, the protesters remind you of emperor penguins huddling together in David Attenborough's Planet Earth. Snow-laden gusts lash their hoods, and yet we see many of their faces in close-up, eyes closed in beatific calm.

Belief binds the group together, but it also induces behaviour that's surely beyond the call of duty, even straying into folly. In the end, their political struggle is overtaken by the more pressing battle with the elements. Amid laughter, the group suddenly gets up and disbands.
Of the remaining four films in the next-door gallery, two are worth watching, and two miss the mark. Crossroad, a three-screen projection by young Romanian artist Dan Acostioaei, is perhaps the strongest piece in the show. Set in Acostioaei's home town, the film records passers-by making the sign of the cross as they pass a sacred site (a statue of the Virgin Mary? A church? What they are looking at is never revealed).

From a sociological point of view, Crossroad is fascinating. According to Acostioaei, in an interview posted on Tate's website, 90 per cent of Romanians are Christian Orthodox. Some of the people in his film make the sign of the cross with precision; watching them experience a flash of spiritual profundity in the middle of an otherwise ordinary day is curiously moving. Others are casual and sloppy with their hand movements. Many make the gesture automatically, out of habit. For them, the sign is not one of religious observance but of social belonging.

Acostioaei is taking a symbol of belief - the sign of the cross - and stripping it down, raising questions about whether a gesture can have spiritual meaning if it is performed without thought. He is also commenting on the copycat nature of human behaviour.

Dieu, by French artist Valérie Mréjen, in which eight Israelis recall the moments that led them to abandon their Orthodox Jewish faith, is a subtle and gentle piece. Like Acostioaei's work, it examines the manner in which seemingly trivial moments can become loaded with momentous meaning.

One man recalls a classmate who switched on a light on the Sabbath, "certain that at that precise instant, flames would shoot from the wall, her fingers would burst into flame, and God himself would make her pay". In a show about belief, it's a nice touch to include a piece that examines scepticism.

I was less taken with Abdul's Dome, a short film of a boy playing in the bombed-out shell of the Afghan National Museum on the outskirts of Kabul. Drenched in bright sunlight, he spirals on the spot like a Sufi dervish. The camera then pans up to the empty sky before the sound of a helicopter thunders on the soundtrack, evoking war. Oh dear. No doubt Abdul feels that the image of a boy playing in ruins is poetic; in fact, it comes across as a sentimental and clichéd statement of hope, the kind of visual language more at home in an advertisement for Benetton, not a work of art.

Similarly, Hip Hop Ni Sasagu ("In Fond Memory of Hip Hop"), by American artist Sanford Biggers, documents a meditative performance in a Buddhist temple in Japan, but feels glib and inauthentic, offering little illumination about the nature of belief.

Given the current climate, what's missing from this show is a piece about Islam. That there isn't one struck me as cowardly. But curators Lucy Askew and Ben Borthwick should still be applauded for unearthing such diverse and thoughtful work, some it from outside the obvious sources of the gallery system and biennials.