Iris Adrienne Langlois-Smith

St. Rita ora pro nobis

Resin, glass and plastic beads, silver charm, ceramic, rusty nail, string

“This work marks a conscious shift in my approach to material use. I’ve begun to work more with materials that are personally meaningful to me—in this piece, a small silver charm that reads “St. RITA ORO PRO NOBIS” (St. Rita, Pray for us). I bought this charm when I was 16, in Lyon, France—at the most beautiful cathedral I've ever visited—La Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière, which sits perched above the city. Months after making this work, I learned that St. Rita is not only the patron saint of impossible causes, but also of “heartbroken women, specifically for sterility, abuse victims, loneliness, marriage difficulties, parenthood, widows, and bodily ills.” (Trüeb & Dias). In a work that explores and investigates perpetual heartbreak and pain mapping in the body, this felt like a staggering synchronicity.Trüeb, Ralph Michel, and Maria Fernanda Reis Gavazzoni Dias. “Saint Rita of Cascia: Patron Saint for Women with Frontal Fibrosing Alopecia?” International Journal of Trichology, vol. 11, no. 3, 2019, pp. 97–100., https://doi.org/10.4103/ijt.ijt_30_19.”