Fastentuch und 12 Skulpturen
2020–2021

The Lent Cloth in St. Stephen's Cathedral – since 2013, a convertible projection surface for contemporary artistic debate with the Easter penitential period – was designed this year by one of the most important contemporary Austrian artists: Erwin Wurm. The artist dresses the baroque high altar of St. Stephen's Cathedral with an 80m2 knitted purple sweater that reminds the priority of warming charity during Easter.

Lent Cloth is related to Erwin Wurm's well-known sculpture Big Mutter - an oversized hot water bottle on human feet (400 × 205 × 110 cm). Standing at the entrance of ​​the cathedral, it present an invitation for new emotional humanity. Further sculpture groups are placed by the artist in the center of the cathedral, opening up unusual perspectives on what it means to be human and critically highlight the deformations in our world. In the period surrounding the most important Christian festival, the celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus at Easter, this arrangement of the sculptures becomes a contemporary artistic framework for the believers’ encounter with God and the promise of an unabridged human life in prayer.