This publication accompanies Catherine Opie's exhibition Walls, Windows and Blood in Naples (19 September - 2 December 2023). The exhibition presents a new body of work initiated during the artist’s American Academy in Rome Residency in summer 2021. ‘The idea of City’ was the theme of the Residency invitation and Opie conceived her research on the form, history and architecture of the Vatican City.
Continuing on from recent bodies of work that consider how society preserves, supports and maintains systems of power through sites and symbols, in Walls, Windows and Blood Opie focuses her eye on the politics of place and the architecture of power, and considers how we might make sense of Catholicism, its structures, reach and impact in an age when the ideologies and legacies of Colonialism are being questioned.
The publication features an essay by Andrea Viliani.