In her artistic practice, the Mexican artist Teresa Margolles addresses the taboo of dying and the death of those whom no one remembers. She transforms corpse wash water into fragile and playful soap bubbles that dance from the ceiling and burst silently on the bodies of museum visitors. These are the silent traces of death that literally get under the skin and are able to establish communication or even communion between the living and the dead. Where Margolles makes death performatively accessible in large Mexican cities, the Austrian artist Esther Strauß examines another taboo: that of birth. In the form of a small sculpture showing the Virgin Mary giving birth in the contemplative setting of the church, the artist thematises the moment of crowning, i.e. the unaivlable moment when the head stretches the woman's vulva to such an extent that the child's head can already be seen and, as if crowned with a crown, it only requires one last effort to see the light of day. Crowning, the title of the sculpture, could not be viewed for long. An unknown perpetrator decapitated the sculpture and took its face, symbolically speaking, robbing Mary of her voice. However, the sculpture, which was locked behind glass doors for almost three weeks, was intended as a silent memorial against the destructive rage against a birthing body. The lecture aims to analyse the aesthetic and political statements as well as the theological implications of the artistic positions. Silence or absence will be explored as a mystical-political category that has the force to approach the power and powerlessness of speechless practices.