Laudato Si' inspires multimedia art exhibit at Jesuit Fairfield University

Rai's video work — quiet, reflective — draws on her mixed Italian and Jewish lineages for "insights into how grief paradoxically sets the conditions for joy, and how mourning and celebration intertwine," says Brinker's catalog essay.

Rai, Brinker writes, "reinvigorates the Eastern European Ashkenazi practice of grave-measuring by conducting it on 'ecological relatives in peril.' And the artist's consideration of trees, waterways and other 'more-than-human' life as ancestors echoes 'The Canticle of Creatures,' a hymn written by St. Francis of Assisi that gives Laudato Si' its title."

The work of Mary Mattingly crosses disciplines, with work in performance, photography, portable architecture and sculptural ecosystems — all aspiring to "poetic visions of adaptation and survival," Brinker said.

In this exhibit, Mattingly focuses on photography of water. The importance of water is a particular concern of Laudato Si', and concern about water was a foundational experience for Mattingly as she lived in a community in northern Connecticut that was exposed to contaminated water due to agricultural runoff.  

"Water was my first subject," she said, quoted in the catalog, "and having an ecological focus that responded to a place and encompassed home wasn't a choice, but probably more of a fundamental part of how I perceive living in the world."

Mattingly, who was brought up Catholic, said that she feels "an affinity with Laudato Si', especially its call for an ecological consciousness that acknowledges our interconnectedness."

"What resonated with me most was its framing of environmental destruction as a social and ethical crisis, not only an issue of science or policy, but one that's deeply tied to justice and responsibility, inequality and human dignity." 

The encyclical, Mattingly said, also asked her "to understand creativity in a way that was expansive, and not always what one would consider moral, but rather an innate human drive."

"It asked me to see the contradictions I witness in my own practice as not a stumbling block that leaves me unable to creatively act. I appreciate that the exhibition expands on its concerns through different artistic lenses. That space for interpretation and critique is important."

As the catalog notes, Francis has said the solutions to the ecological crisis and its multiple causes "will not emerge from just one way of interpreting and transforming reality. Respect must also be shown for the various cultural riches of different peoples, their art and poetry, their interior life and spirituality.

"If we are truly concerned to develop an ecology capable of remedying the damage we have done, no branch of the sciences and no form of wisdom can be left out."

In a joint interview at the gallery on the day that the exhibit opened (Jan. 24) Brinker, director of the St. Louis University Museum of Contemporary Religious Art and his co-curator Al Miner, an independent curator and the deputy director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., said it took three years from the idea's conception for the exhibit to become a reality at Fairfield, its initial venue. (The exhibit will travel in the fall to the St. Louis museum.)

Miner recalls that in 2022, when he was teaching at Georgetown University, he and Brinker began discussing a possible exhibit. "Laudato Si' was in the air at the time," he said. 

Any exhibit focusing on climate change will inevitably be political in some respects, and both wondered how best to convey the "spiritual, poetic and evocative" elements of what the pope spoke of in his work, Miner said.

"We didn't seek artists who would seek to expressly 'illustrate' Laudato Si'," Brinker said. Brinker, who had worked as head of a museum at another Jesuit institution, was intrigued by the elements of Ignatian tradition that could underline an exhibit: body, mind and spirit.

The three artists ultimately selected offer challenging work that "invites a response by the viewer," Brinker said. That, in turn, invites "dialogue and respect."

Writing in the catalog, Brinker said the work of the three artists call us to a "loving awareness," quoting Francis, "of our common home." 

"By awakening us to the particularities and interconnectedness of the spaces we inhabit, these artists help transform climate despair into climate hope," Brinker writes, "With this shifted perspective, we may be ready to answer the call of Laudato Si' and so many other voices, to move from awareness to action."

Francis, again quoted in the catalog, said, "Many things have to change course, but it is we human beings above all who need to change. … A great cultural, spiritual and educational challenge stands before us, and it will demand that we set out on the long path of renewal."

That resonates with Mattingly, who believes exhibitions are opportunities for conversation.

"Exhibitions aren't only about representation, they can be spaces to test ways of thinking, building, and being in relationship with the world," she said. "I'm interested in how we can push beyond critique into action: how exhibitions can propose, experiment, and invite people into imagining and enacting change."

"To See This Place: Awakening to Our Common Home" will be on display at the Fairfield University Art Museum's Walsh Gallery in the Quick Center for the Arts, Fairfield, Conn., through March 29.