Rita Koehler

Xenia

Xenia is a social documentation in response to Rome’s investigation of US Women Religious.

Xenia is my response to Rome's investigation of U.S. Women Religious from January 2009 until April of 2015. It is also a story about my experience growing up Catholic with Women Religious as my teachers, my surrogate mothers, and my lifelong mentors.

Included in this body of work are photographic portraits of vowed religious sisters living in community and currently ministering in the U.S. as well as portraits of sisters who were in community but left after the Second Vatican Council, giving women the opportunity to serve and minister to an ever changing contemporary world as a lay person rather than a vowed religious bound by canonical dictates.

A photographic, still-life triptych references the long history between art and the Catholic Church. The triptych is a representation of the call to the table and toward mutuality. It depicts a movement towards ministry and hospitality as embodied by women religious communities post Vatican II.

In addition, I hand construct prayer cards made from linocuts and oil paint to create mono and ghost prints on paper referencing the mass-produced devotional or holy cards used throughout Church history. These prayer cards interpret my time with various congregations and their particular charisms. 

Lastly, an installation piece modeled after a wooden relic prayer box used in convents of the past to pray for deceased sisters holds “take away” vigil candles. This body of work is meant to introduce and educate our contemporary society to the quiet humanitarian works of these courageous women through image and a public art practice.

XENIA TRIPTYCH

INSTALLATION VIEWS:

Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL

Inside wooden boxes, mounted on the walls outside of every common room of every convent of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, were small round paper discs bearing the obituary number of a deceased member of the congregation. Sisters would draw one of the discs out of the box before entering the chapel, and would pray a silent prayer for the sister whose number they drew. The paper discs that serve as wax protectors on the vigil candles you see below bore the ranking number of every living, ministering Holy Cross sister today. Those coming to see the exhibition were invited to take a vigil candle, light it in the gallery or at home, leave it somewhere as an offering, use it to offer a kind thought, prayer, or some other form of communion ritual.