Artistic intervention
At the Kunsthistorisches Museum has provided a space for artistic interventions since 2003. A portal separates old from contemporary art. In a second, so to speak, you walk through about 200 years. This makes it possible to experience and feel how much Admont Abbey identifies with contemporary art and how it brings it into a vital dialogue with the art of past eras. In 2017, the room for artistic intervention is designed by Carola Willbrand under the title "HimmelsHöllenKleid". A bell chasuble floats in the room like a tent. It hangs on a parament hanger for the museum presentation of liturgical textiles.
The material is handmade paper from textiles worn by the artist. A dance of death moves across the paper. These drawings are sewn by machine. Death accompanies all the seamstresses and embroiderers, the people's garments, death accompanies the world travels of textiles since the discovery of the sea routes to Asia at the beginning of the 15th century. Patterns, flowers and animals from China were incorporated into European liturgical fabrics. Today, we clothe ourselves with cheap textiles from Asia that are produced under inhumane, deadly conditions.
THE DRESS FROM HEAVEN
This 'SkyHellDress' is reversible. The sewing drawings with their different colours of the upper and lower threads are visible both from the outside and the inside. This dress, which is also a tent, the canopy of heaven as an image of creation, refers to the historical liturgical textiles in the Benedictine monastery at Admont. The Dance of Death is a reaction to the new Gothic exhibition at Admont Abbey.
The individual handmade papers can be folded together like a fanfold. Carola Willbrand has long been interested in the leporello as a means of creating a sculptural, room-filling artist's book. Carola Willbrand spontaneously developed the attachment of special text excerpts as thread reading on the wall on site - also due to the influence of the new Gothic exhibition. The font refers to the textura, the Gothic script, which is also known as grid script. The font and the choice of text refer to the significance and impact of our historical roots on the present day.
The artist
Carola Willbrand born 1952, "sewing methodologist", lives and works near Cologne, grew up with the art of her aunt, Käthe Schmitz-Imhoff (her father's sister), the first woman to study under Heinrich Nauen at the Düsseldorf Academy. She has been exhibiting since 1981, in which the thread as a metaphor for the thread of life on a wide variety of materials forms the supporting element.
