The Folk Saints Index
The Folk Saints Index is a collaborative piece exploring martyrdom & sainthood. Looking into obscurity to find our figures, we want to venerate those who symbolically “died for our sins,” to understand sacrifice & honor. We ask ourselves to create personal processes of canonization, interpreting the worship of the folk saint (described as dead people or spiritually powerful deiforms worshipped outside the realms of the church) as a form of personal politics. These cultural adaptations side-eyed by the church, haphazardly crammed into a saintly framework never meant for them, yet ultimately becoming symbols of resistance through liberation theology—religion used as an act of spiritual resuscitation. The folk saint is the sinner, the false idol, the folk healer, the colonized spirit, the revolutionary martyr, the artist, the musician.
