Catherine Opie

Made during Opie's American Academy at Rome residency, No Apology (June 5, 2021) is part of a wider body of work Walls, Windows, and Blood, first exhibited at Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples. ‘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. Opie sought to look at the architecture of power and 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. No Apology (June 5, 2021) is an image of Pope Francis on his papal balcony addressing the Sunday congregation. On this day the Church first acknowledged – but did not apologise for – the bodies of Indigenous children found in unmarked graves in Canada, who died in the abusive care of Church-run, government funded residential schools whose aim was to assimilate children into Euro-Christian society. The following year in 2022, on a papal visit to Canada, Pope Francis made a formal apology to the Indigenous peoples of Canada for the Church’s role in running these torturous institutions – part of a dogmatic European expansionist regime to spread Christianity – and the devastating effect it had on generations of Indigenous peoples.