In its first full year of programming, the ISM’s Religion, Ecology and Expressive Culture initiative featured a wide variety of events—exhibitions, plays, workshops, panels, conferences— that drew attention to the rich and growing body of work at the intersection of religion, ecology, and expressive cultures. In diverse and powerful ways, this year’s events explored the three themes that are at the core of the initiative’s work.
The first theme, Sacred Cosmologies, Environmental Change, and Expressive Culture, was featured in the play, When Wajcha Meets Pachamama. Written by the liturgical scholar Claudio Carvalhaes, the play told the story of a clown, Wajcha, who encountered Pachamama, the figure of the Earth in Indigenous Andean cosmology. The play combined narrative, humor, puppetry, and a variety of non-human characters to illustrate how damage inflicted upon Pachamama damages us as well.