L. van Berge (Laila) MA

Laila van Berge is a visual artist and academic researcher with a fascination for the spiritual and the supernatural. In their work, they explore the entanglement of contemporary spiritual practices, objects, and ideas and their cultural context. Through cases of modern magic and spirituality situated in a secular scene, Laila questions the more abstract modes of the making of man and meaning and ways of worlding.

Currently, Laila is a PhD candidate in comparative religious studies at the Radboud University under the supervision of Justine Bakker and Martijn de Koning. In this research project, they explore the relation between spirituality and whiteness within wellness retreats. Herein, the focus is on the onto-epistemologies embedded, expressed and experienced in wellness retreats located in Southeast Asia and Mesoamerica. By thinking through wellness via auto-ethnographic immersion and thinking with wellness devotees, Laila aims to understand the potential of wellness to subvert and/or subjugate to the mainstream metaphysics of Western Modernity. Laila is curious to understand how these retreats can become places that perpetuate predominant systems of social inequalities as well as how they might be able to open up routes to alterity.

With a background in Fine Arts (KABK), Cultural Studies (UvA), and a Research Master's in Religious Studies (UvA), Laila brings a critical and interdisciplinary approach to her exploration(s).