Sündenbock

The first mention of a Scapegoat appears in Leviticus. In biblical telling, a goat was selected to be banished into the harshest of deserts while carrying the sins of the Israelites on its back. Atoned, the Israelities would be thereafter permitted to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

In many ways, the story of the Scapegoat is the story of the violent dualism that defines western citizenry. One can see the repercussions of the Scapegoat’s narrative of exceptionalism in nearly all expressions of western life: political violence, fascism, fandom, corporate culture, distinctions created between private and public activity, even traditional forms of therapy and confession.

With the exhibition Sündenbock Moriah Askenaizer and Ella CB deal with the following questions: What happens when, instead of running off into the wild with the sins of civilization on its back, the goat turns around and charges towards the city square? What happens if the Scapegoat breaks into and takes occupancy in an apartment? What would the lived space of the Scapegoat look like and how would that imaging effect an understanding of what is structurally understood as life? In what way would normalized social contracts expand or break if the scapegoat were to walk amongst those who had shunned its presence? Is there a way to welcome the traumas, violences, and injustices of a society back towards its center; to refute the easy, metaphoric catharsis of removal and its subsequent amnesia, in order to begin to build alternative forms of collective healing?

Sündenbock is an installation of video work, found objects, ceramics and paintings that would convey the lived environment of the Scapegoat. Filth, jars of fermenting liquids, flowers, weeds, stones, natural processes of decay and regeneration, the profane and profound paraphernalia of worship, pop culture, and self-making are accumulated and arranged in the gallery space. We would like to create a space in which the cultural damage of the Scapegoat’s narrative is rehabilitated as, and expressed through a lived and vibrant grief.

Artist biographies:

Moriah Askenaizer (1992, Los Angeles, California, USA) completed her studies at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste - Städelschule in 2019. From 2010-2014 she studied at the Cooper Union School of Art, New York. She lives and works in Frankfurt a.M. and Berlin.

Ella CB (1988, Hamburg) studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste - Städelschule. From 2011-2015 she studied biochemistry and philosophy at the Humboldt University of Berlin and the Technical University of Berlin. She lives and works in Frankfurt a.M.

Photos: Ivan Murzin

Curated by KVTV, the exhibition was supported by Frauenraferat Frankfurt and Kulturamt Frankfurt a.M.