SpaceMosque

As part of the exhibition Science Fiction(s) - If There Were a Tomorrow, Weltmuseum Wien presents the work SpaceMosque by Pakistani-American artist Saks Afridi in the Theseus Temple at Volksgarten. A spaceship minaret floats in the center of the temple. In his speculative narrative, Saks Afridi asks the question, What if all prayers were answered? Would the world be better or just our own lives?

In his story that looks back to the recent past, all prayers come true after the appearance of the spaceship. To people, the object appears in different forms according to their beliefs: As a church, temple, synagogue, mosque or a ray of light.

Saks Afridi was born in Peshawar and lives in New York. He describes his work as Sci-Fi Sufism in which he combines story telling with Islamic mysticism.

Contemporary Art at the Theseus Temple

Beginning in 2012, the museum began a new series of exhibitions within the Temple, a neo-classical structure built by court architect Peter von Nobile in 1823 to be the home for a single work of then-contemporary art: Antonio Canova's white marble masterpiece Theseus Slaying the Centaur. For almost seventy years, this artwork stood alone inside the building, until in 1891 it was moved to the newly completed Kunsthistorisches Museum where it still stands today. More than a century later, these exhibitions have returned the Temple to its original purpose: to house remarkable artworks by contemporary artists, one at a time.

Artists who have previously exhibited at the Theseus Temple include Ugo Rondinone (2012), Kris Martin (2012), Richard Wright (2013), Edmund de Waal (2014), Susan Philipsz (2015), Ron Mueck (2016), Kathleen Ryan (2017), Felix Gonzalez-Torres (2018), Maurizio Cattelan (2019), Susanna Fritscher (2021) and George Nuku (2022).