Maurizio Cattelan Wants You to Confess Your Sins

Maurizio Cattelan b. 1960, Italy Follow +

Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, who is known for blurring the line between art and stunt-based jokes, will tomorrow open a hotline where troubled callers can confess their sins.

The launch accompanies the release of a series of miniature editions of his 1999 sculpture La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour), which depicts the controversial pope John Paul II after being hit by a meteorite.

Cattelan has invited anyone interested in sharing their secrets to come forward via a WhatsApp voice note or phone call. He will then select those he sees as most in need of absolution and invite them to confess, with him acting as priest, during a livestreamed event on 23 April.

The timing of the announcement of the editioned sculptures, the original of which was considered by some Catholics to be a blasphemous attack on the authority of the papacy, is somewhat provocative.

It falls just before Easter weekend, the holiest time of the year for Catholics, on the 21st anniversary of John Paul II’s death in April 2005 and on April Fools’ Day—though it isn’t a prank: the artworks are already available for sale.

The works have also been released in an edition of 666 which, in the Bible, is associated with the devil.

The artist told The Guardian that he was simply interested in probing the visuals associated with the religion in which he was raised. “Catholicism is something you grow up inside, even if you try to step out of it,” he told the paper.

“It’s belief, theatre, control, comfort—all at once. I’m not trying to defend it or attack it. I’m interested in the images it produces and the tension they carry. If someone feels offended, it probably means the image is still alive.”

While some saw the original La Nona Ora as sacrilegious, with a Polish art historian and museum director forced to resign after exhibiting it in 2001, others saw it as a depiction of human fallibility.

Cattelan has not clarified his position. “When it was finished and I stood in front of it, I felt as if something was missing, that the piece was not complete,” he told Sculpture magazine in 2005.

“What it needed was very simple: It lacked drama and the capacity to convey the feeling of being in front of something extraordinary and powerful. It didn’t have the sense of failure and defeat.”

The work did not damage relations with the Vatican; Cattelan was invited to exhibit in the Holy See, the Vatican’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale, in 2024.

Cattelan has continued to provoke debate throughout his career, becoming highly successful doing so. His 2019 artwork, titled Comedian, composed of a banana duct taped to a wall, sold at Sotheby’s New York for $6.2m in 2024.

Last November, his sculpture of a functional solid 18-carat gold toilet sold for $12.1m, also at Sotheby’s. Some observed that the price was not significantly higher than the value of the gold by weight, which was about $10m.