Pierre Bona, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons "New Cathedral" in Linz, Austria
CV NEWS FEED// A controversial, explicit statue of the Blessed Mother giving birth was decapitated only four days after it was displayed in the “New Cathedral,” in the Austrian city of Linz.
The statue depicted the Blessed Mother in the moments before birth, with her abdomen and lower body completely exposed.
The statue was part of an exhibition celebrating the New Cathedral’s 100th anniversary, the news agency Kronen Zeitung reports. Completed in 1924, the cathedral is the largest in Austria, and it can fit up to 20,000 people.
Theologian Martina Resch explained during the exposition that the statue “is a strong commitment to the Incarnation of God. The story of salvation does not begin with Jesus, but with the Annunciation, and becomes vivid at the moment when new life is born.”
The artist, Esther Strauß, said she created the statue because she thought the moment was missing in the artistic history depicting the Blessed Mother. “Perhaps Mary is the woman in the world of whom there are the most paintings, drawings and sculptures. The majority of these depictions were made by men,” Strauß said.
“Why does the image that is missing stand out among them? The Nativity, which millions of people celebrate on December 24th, is not depicted in any painting or sculpture. When we talk about the birth of Christ, we imagine a child in a manger, but not his mother giving birth to him,” she added, justifying her sculpture.
In her personal website, Esther Strauß (1986) describes herself as “a performance and language artist.” “In 2015, Strauß slept and dreamed on Anna Freud’s psychoanalytic couch in the Sigmund Freud Museum in London. In 2016, she dug up her grandfather’s grave with her hands and washed herself with the earth that was his home.”
The news agency reported that the people responsible for the exhibition had thought the image “would cause discussion, but not the act of vandalism.”
