Steven Holmes

Steven Holmes is a Canadian born artist and curator who currently lives and works in Hartford Connecticut. A graduate of University of Toronto, Harvard Divinity School, and The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, his studio practice is concerned with the intersection of religious and aesthetic experience. As a curator, his current area of enquiry relates to the use of beauty as tactical and strategic methods of resistance.  

What unites his two practices – art making and curatorial work – is an understanding of experience as a form of knowledge that does not rely on language. To the extent aesthetic and spiritual experiences take place outside of language, the resulting meaning of those experiences can’t be argued or co-opted – making experience a defense against the political discourses that seek to confuse, appropriate or defeat meaning. 

Experience - aesthetic, spiritual experience - tells us we are. To experience is to be.