Asking for a Friend

Asking for a Friend. The phrase hides the shame – shame of being exposed for one’s desires, for one’s true self. To conceal the personal, one conjures up a friend. The imaginary companion: a disguise, yet also a medium. With the title Asking for a Friend, artist Achinoam Alon transforms this imaginary friend into the medium of the group exhibition she curated at Kunstverein Nürnberg. In their multifaceted artistic works, the participating artists Achinoam Alon, Suse Bauer, Keren Cytter, Aurélie B. Dubois, Liora Epstein, Leon Kahane, I. S. Kalter and Atalya Laufer provide answers to what lurks behind the friend, what is being mediated and why this is necessary. Simultaneously, the imaginary friend embodies the concept of the ‘big Other’, as formulated by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan: a symbolic order that exists as an otherness to the self, yet defines what the self is and what it desires. Through the imagined friend, the self masks its flaws while revealing those of the other. Thus, within the sculptural, drawn, videographic, and installative portrayal of this supposed friend, personal traces of the artists’ own identities emerge: Biographical elements of predominantly Jewish artists intertwine with broader social narratives of German and Israeli history. These narratives traverse the architectural and artistic expressions reflecting their experiences of exclusion, confront antisemitic distortions of Jewishness, while also critically examining the sudden pertinent position as ‘Jewish artists’ or as allies – within contemporary art’s collective framework and alongside utopian aspirations for a future art-world increasingly shaped by the inclusive ethos of ‘we’ – particularly since documenta fifteen. “Asking for a friend” also serves as an ironic and somber commentary on the status of Jewish and Israeli artists following the Hamas massacres of October 7, 2023. The notion of the ‘friend’ takes on a guise of camouflage amidst the precariousness of Jewish identity. However, what awaits us in Asking for a Friend is not a retreat into the identitarian confines of ‘Jewish art’, but rather a confident foray into the non-identical. It is a journey where art continues to push boundaries, particularly in a post-October 7 landscape seeking to solidify its foundations. (…)