Joschua Yesni Arnaut, This Is Not For You at 1822-Forum, Frankfurt am Main

This Is Not For You by Joschua Yesni Arnaut, with collaborator Severine Henriette Meier (Per Yngve Ohlin), curated by Max Pauer, at 1822-Forum, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 16.01.2024 – 30.03.2024.

Exhibition Text:

Memory can either be characterized as a deliberate attempt to recall the past or evoked without conscious effort, triggering a chain of related recollections. Nostalgia, in this sense, overlays people, objects, and events from different time periods, forming a nonlinear relationship with time—a blend of past experiences filtered through present emotions. This reconstructive process weaves together a subjectively coherent yet distorted narrative.

In literature, fragmentation acts as a storytelling device that unites disparate elements while pulling the plot in opposing directions, allowing individual pieces to be read in isolation or as part of a whole. This concept of speculative autobiography is central to the practice of Joschua Yesni Arnaut, who fills in the blank spaces of his family’s past using photographs, documents, and objects as guiding tools.

Although This Is Not For You is a solo exhibition, Arnaut invited befriended painters and illustrators into a collaborative dialogue, crediting even his late grandfather, Omer Arnaut, as co-author. A former photographer for a local newspaper in Ex-Yugoslavia, Omer documented socialist leader Josip Broz Tito’s dealings. However, rather than focusing on political documentation, Arnaut highlights his grandfather’s commissioned work for a 1970s theater stage play and private snapshots discovered in the archive.

His research extends beyond family records, incorporating recent official letters from German institutions regarding the enigmatic life of his father, a criminal justice lawyer who turned to drug dealing and ultimately vanished. These findings, combined with archival footage, are bound together in a sequence panel by an emergency stretcher—an object symbolizing both rescue and trauma.

A central element of the exhibition is a confessional chair framing an oil painting based on a notorious album cover depicting a gruesome scene. This piece invites viewers into an intimate yet confrontational space. As part of its preparation, the canvas was buried for an entire month over the previous winter, further embedding it within themes of decay and transformation.

This Is Not For You presents itself as a dense collision of anecdotal imagery and layered authorship, engaging with themes of theatrical nostalgia, variations on vanitas motifs, and moments of tenderness found within aggression.