PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God

“There are two kinds of secrets: those we keep from others, and the ones we hide from ourselves.”

– Frank Warren, founder and curator of PostSecret

“Warren’s archive of conscience-clearing confessions have arrived at his doorstep on everything from coffee cups and Rubik’s Cubes to funeral announcements, sonograms and naked Polaroids.”

– Carolin Vesely, WhatsOnWinnipeg

Following the success and popularity of the first PostSecret exhibition, International Arts & Artists presented PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God, a second exhibition of Frank Warren’s project, this one focusing exclusively on the subject of faith.

 

Frank Warren began the PostSecret Project in 2004 when, on a whim, he began handing out blank, self-addressed postcards to strangers, inviting them to “Send Frank a secret.” The only requirements were that the secret be truthful and not previously disclosed to anyone. The results were, to Frank, revelatory: the unsigned postcards, many of them embellished with drawings, prints, or magazine cut-outs, are funny, profound, disturbing; sometimes all at once. Warren’s unique public confessional appeals to our need for contrition and to our perennial curiosity about our fellow humans. He now receives over 1,000 anonymous secrets a week, and the blog he created to showcase them draws six million visitors a month.

 

PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God featured more than 270 confessional postcards, unveiling a myriad of private thoughts, doubts, and feelings concerning spirituality and religion. This exhibition was inspired by a recent installation, All Faiths Beautiful: From Atheism to Zoroastrianism, Respect for Diversity of Belief, at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. Expressing the spirit of this new exhibition, museum director Rebecca Hoffberger states: “Whereas much has been made of interfaith discussion (surely meritorious) the deeper reality is that faith is never a monolithic thing, but rather a more personal, individualistic phenomenon.”

 

Visit the website at http://www.postsecretcommunity.com/lifedeathgod/

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