Friendship

Artists: Lola Gonzàlez, Juliette Green, Asta Gröting, Eva Kot’átková, Hanne Lippard, Tuomo Manninen, Roxane Mbanga, Nepal Picture Library, Raphaela Simon

Friendship is an essential part of our lives, not a mere enrichment. It nourishes our wellbeing and benefits our health. It empowers us as individuals and brings people together as parts of the same social world. But what draws us towards one another? Where does connection emerge from – and what happens when the bond fades?

Kunsthalle Mainz invites you to explore these questions through photography, installation, video, sound, and textile works in its new exhibition Freund*innenschaft (Friendship). Freund*innenschaft challenges visitors to focus on affinity and connection rather than disconnect and isolation. Shared experiences, collective interests and mutual trust are the basis for commonalities which intersect more established or reified categories such as age, gender, origin and social background. 

Through their works, the participating artists explore friendship as a place of strength, creativity, and empathy. At the same time, they show that tension, compromise, and vulnerability form an intrinsic part of interpersonal relationships. The artists invite visitors to question and understand friendship as a conscious act of decision making: a relation which needs to be nurtured, evaluated, adapted, and (re-)activated regularly.

Our society is captivated by romantic relationships; we have developed an extensive vocabulary and guidelines to negotiate romantic feelings. Similarly, family ties have generated complex, culturally specific codes of conduct. Friendship, however, is widely unexplored. Yet, irrespective of our socio-cultural background, we are all looking for kindred spirits, for affinity and commonality. The exhibition offers friendship as a hopeful framework for thinking – and possibly a guide to foster empathy and solidarity. Its playful and humorous tone opens a space to ask existential questions about what defines us as human beings and what connects us to a wider social network.

The exhibition is curated by Marlène Harles. 

The exhibition is supported by the Ministry of Municipalities, Building, Housing and Culture, Rhineland-Palatinate.

Do not miss out on our programme accompanying the exhibition, for example:

A celebration of friendship in and around Kunsthalle Mainz
Saturday, September 12, 2026, 4pm

FILMZ x Kunsthalle Mainz present experimental films on friendship 
Wednesday, November 4, 2026, 6pm

Bromance-Talk 
with Ole Liebl, Tobias Boll and Sarah Horn
Wednesday, November 25, 2026, 6pm

Friendship-Sounds
with Hauke Dorsch
Wednesday, December 9, 2026, 6pm