More messaging at the expense of the Faith and the faithful: Austrian Bishop & Priests Praising Depraved Blasphemy, Mary as Bearded Man

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The Vienna Artists Collective is staging a Christmas Exhibition in Vienna

The exhibition DU SOLLST DIR EIN BILD MACHEN (YOU SHALL MAKE YOURSELF AN IMAGE) explores the imaginative power of religious experience, its visual counterpart in Christian iconography, and its interpretation by contemporary artists. The focus is on works whose creators approach Christian iconography with a critical but also loving, humorous but also feminist eye, enabling new perspectives on pictorial motifs that have been handed down over centuries. In its conception and orientation, the exhibition does not stand for superficial provocation or loud protest, but rather for a differentiated view, a search for common ground and an endeavour to promote a dialogue between contemporary art and religion.

Religion and art are among the essential traits of human beings and deal with fundamental questions: the question of meaning, the world, our existence. Religion makes the unfamiliar familiar, while art often contrasts the familiar world with an unfamiliar realm. Church and art are also connected by the irrational, the mysterious and, in particular, the imagination and the power to create a world with its own rules and laws – a world that also reflects back on our lives and tells us about our existence. A variety of these worlds is made visible in DU SOLLST DIR EIN BILD MACHEN (YOU SHALL MAKE YOURSELF AN IMAGE).

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This image making also includes a nude Pieta. Their website has more.

And if you thought that was shocking, the exhibition has been praised by the Artists' Bishop Glettler, the Parish Priest of the Cathedral Parish and a Jesuit even writes in its praise in the programme.

"'Du sollst Dir ein Bild machen' exhibition at the Vienna Künstlerhaus – well-deserved rating: a must-see! [...] The exhibition is evidence of the endless struggle to somehow do justice to the mystery of God, who has inscribed himself into a wounded world." – Bishop Hermann Glettler, Innsbruck (on Instagram)



Bishop Glettler who was thought in the running for Vienna