FAIRFIELD, CONN.- Fairfield University Art Museum is presenting To See This Place: Awakening to Our Common Home, an exhibition of works by Athena LaTocha, Mary Mattingly, and Tyler Rai—all of which are personal responses to our climate crisis—on view January 24 through March 29, 2025, in the Museum’s Walsh Gallery in the Quick Center for the Arts.

Environmental threats and climate change are urgent matters of concern at Jesuit universities, where conversations on this topic often take place in reference to two documents by Pope Francis: Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home (2015), and the 2023 update, Laudate Deum.

Artists play an indispensable role in our collective response to climate change. To See This Place, was co-curated by David Brinker, Director of the Saint Louis University Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, and Albey Minor, independent curator and the deputy director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). The exhibition will present work by Athena LaTocha, Mary Mattingly, and Tyler Rai, three contemporary artists whose outlook resonates with the themes of Laudato Si’ and Laudate Deum. Embodying a breadth of personal, geographic, and cultural backgrounds, the artists create works strongly associated with a sense of place, whether specific or imaginary. They employ media as diverse as photography, sculpture, video, and painting, and often incorporate materials sourced from particular locales. Yet the artists draw forth broader themes from this particularity, critiquing political and economic systems that perpetuate destructive self-interest, and drawing attention to people who have been marginalized and historically excluded or harmed. The works are artistically compelling yet can inspire us to creativity and boldness in our efforts to address climate change.

To See This Place is an invitation to wake up to the particularities of the spaces we inhabit, to savor their glorious interconnectedness, but also a call to confront the threats before us—to move from awareness to action. In the midst of conflicting narratives and systems that seem impervious to reform, the work of these three artists calls us to, in Pope Francis’ words, “a loving awareness” of our common home.

A wonderful selection of programming has been created to complement this exhibition, including an opening night talk with the guest curators, a gallery talk with Mary Mattingly, a family day event focused on landscape and recycled materials, and a workshop with instruction on how to paint landscapes with watercolor. All programs are free and open to the public.