Celebrate Life!

Life, transience, death – for each and every one of us they are inevitable elements of human existence but everyone faces them in his or her own way. In everyday life dying and death are usually blocked out.

The project “Celebrate Life!” invited prominent national and international representatives of the cultural and art scene to instigate a dialogue: what remains of us when we die? What is important when faced with the fact that life is but transient, what traces do we leave behind? How do I want to die?

Barbara Coudenhove-Kalergi, Christiane Hörbiger, Karl Markovics, Robert Menasse, Cornelius Obonya, Arnulf Rainer, Barbara Stöckl, Michael Landau and Josef Zotter have all agreed to have a mask taken of their face, and the internationally renowned artists Daniel Knorr, Erik van Lieshout, Teresa Margolles, Arnulf Rainer, Hans Schabus, Hubert Scheibl, Deborah Sengl, Daniel Spoerri, Kader Attia and Nives Widauer have all agreed to work with these masks. All participants have focused on death in their previous work.
The results of these interventions will be presented in a special exhibition that is part of a collaboration between Caritas and the Kunsthistorisches Museum. The sumptuous galleries of the Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities, especially those showcasing artefacts connected with the funerary cult and portraiture, offer a stimulating setting and emphasise the curatorial idea behind this show, which focuses on the long tradition of artists reflecting on life and death. The colours of the memento mori have always been part of the palette of artistic inspiration.

The idea to produce life masks of living celebrities was proposed by the Caritas of the Archdiocese of Vienna in order to call attention to the quiet but vital work of its mobile hospice, embraced and carried out day in, day out by Caritas staff members and numerous volunteers. The project hopes to make us all reflect on life, on dying and on death - because the dying are one thing above all else: alive and living until the very end.
Robert Menasse suggested expanding the project in the form of visual arts interventions; it was realized by Cathérine Hug (Kunsthaus Zurich) in collaboration with Manuela Laubenberger (Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities), who were also responsible for the curatorial concept.