News from Civsy, based on generative AI tools and retrieval-augumented real time data searchIn late 2025, Vienna’s Künstlerhaus opened “Du sollst dir ein Bild machen / You Shall Make for Yourself an Image”, a major exhibition bringing together more than 30 artists reworking Christian symbols through critical, feminist, and queer perspectives. The show presented religious iconography as a field of struggle over power, gender, and belief, juxtaposing historical motifs with provocative works by artists including Martin Kippenberger, Marina Abramović, Renate Bertlmann, and Austrian artist Deborah Sengl.
The Austrian Society for the Protection of Tradition, Family, and Private Property (TFP), a conservative Catholic organization, quickly identified the show as “blasphemous” and launched an online petition demanding that Künstlerhaus close the exhibition. The campaign, amplified by a parallel initiative from the American TFP and allied groups, framed the exhibition as an attack on Christian faith and family values and urged public authorities and donors to withdraw support.
Street pressure and church reactions
TFP escalated its opposition with a high‑profile “prayer of atonement” outside Künstlerhaus on 8 December, where demonstrators recited the rosary and displayed banners denouncing specific works. Among the most targeted pieces were Kippenberger’s crucified frog and a reinterpretation of the Virgin Mary as a transgender figure, held up by organizers as proof of alleged hatred toward Christianity.
Künstlerhaus leadership rejected the demand to shut down the show, stressing that artistic freedom is a constitutionally protected right and that museums must remain spaces for critical reflection. Senior Catholic figures, including Bishop Hermann Glettler and Vienna Cathedral priest Toni Faber, offered unexpectedly nuanced support, describing the exhibition as challenging but worthwhile and insisting that art has a legitimate role in wrestling with the mystery of God.
Harassment and retaliation against Deborah Sengl
Within this polarized climate, Deborah Sengl became one of the most visible individual targets of the campaign. Known for works like Of Sheep and Wolves (2008), which uses animal figures to comment on hypocrisy and abuse of power in religious and social hierarchies, Sengl’s pieces in the Künstlerhaus show were singled out as emblematic of alleged “anti‑Christian” attitudes.
Following the petitions and prayer rallies, Sengl began receiving hostile and abusive messages, including emails referencing the TFP campaign and condemning her as an enemy of faith. According to the Künstlerhaus director, at least one planned institutional exhibition of her work was subsequently canceled, a decision observers link directly to the controversy around the religious show and the fear of becoming a target of similar protests.
Chilling effects on artistic freedom
The TFP campaign unfolded in a broader Austrian context marked by recent attacks on religiously themed contemporary art, including vandalism against works by Esther Strauss and Franziskus Grüner in church settings. These episodes, combined with the pressure on Künstlerhaus and Sengl, indicate a rising willingness by conservative actors to police cultural institutions through petitions, public ritual, and reputational threats rather than legal bans.
For artistic freedom, the case underlines how non‑state campaigns can still function as de facto censorship. Even when an exhibition remains open, targeted harassment of artists and the quiet cancellation of future projects send a clear warning: institutions that exhibit critical or irreverent religious art, and artists who produce it, may pay a high professional and personal price.
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A major contemporary art exhibition at Vienna’s Künstlerhaus has come under coordinated attack from a conservative Catholic petition, with serious consequences for artistic freedom in Austria.
The show “Du sollst dir ein Bild machen / You Shall Make for Yourself an Image” presents critical and queer reinterpretations of Christian imagery. In response, the Austrian and American branches of the Society for the Protection of Tradition, Family, and Private Property (TFP) mobilised petitions and street “prayer” actions demanding closure of the exhibition.
Artist Deborah Sengl, whose work examines hypocrisy and power in religious contexts, has been directly targeted with harassment, and at least one of her planned exhibitions has been canceled in the wake of the controversy. This shows how organised religious‑political pressure can narrow the space for challenging art, even without formal state censorship.
#ArtisticFreedom #Censorship #Austria #ContemporaryArt #DeborahSengl #HumanRights #CulturalRights #MuseumSector #MimetaMemos
