Lehmann Maupin announces Walls, Windows and Blood, the U.S. debut of a recent body of work from acclaimed American photographer Catherine Opie. In this series Opie turns her lens towards the history and architecture of Vatican City. By examining the power systems and architectural structures that exist within the Vatican, the artist engages with both the legacy and present identity of this city within a city, raising critical questions about the history of the Roman Catholic Church and Catholicism and its impact today.

In Walls, Windows and Blood, Opie carefully examines the politics of place as it relates to identity, advancing ideas explored in many of her recent bodies of work including The Modernist (2017), Rhetorical Landscapes (2019), and 2020. While The Modernist dealt with themes of political breakdown and global upheaval, Rhetorical Landscapes pictured a portrait of America through the prism of the physical and political landscape, considering the violent language rife in U.S. political discourse as well as the impending ecological destruction resulting from climate change. In 2020, Opie documented the lead up to the presidential election on a cross country road trip, with photographs taken against the backdrop of the global pandemic and widespread uprising against police brutality. In each of these series Opie seeks to map the complexities of our contemporary moment, especially with respect to the relationship between identity and structures of power, both physical and social.