Friend of the Artist
15th A.I.R. Biennial

GALLERY I & II

Shirin Towfiq and Bryan Truitt, Cup for Two, 2017, stoneware, 12 x 6 inches.

January 7–February 5, 2023

Opening reception: Saturday, January 7 from 6–8pm

Performance: DUVET, Saturday, January 21 from 2–4pm

Publication Launch: Peer Review, Saturday, February 4, from 4–6pm

Shia Conlon, Duvet, Valérie Hallier, Luiza Kurzyna, Georgia Lale, Manxs Americanxs, Priscilla Otani, Kariny Padilla, Peer Review, Dan Perjovschi, Elise Rasmussen, Annika Sarin, Elisabeth Smolarz, Super Futures Haunt Qollective, Shirin Towfiq and Bryan Truitt, Angie Waller

Curated by Eriola Pira

A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce its 15th Biennial exhibition, Friend of the Artist, curated by Eriola Pira. Taking an open-call format, the exhibition asks artists to invite the public into their webs of relation, love, and mutual support. The works in Friend of the Artist offer intimate glimpses of individual friendships, as well as considerations of collaboration, community, and solidarity in artmaking and life. 

Bringing together works meant for gallery display with a performance (Duvet), publication (Peer Review), and correspondence (Manxs Americanxs), the exhibition is offered as a place for artmaking, communing, and organizing. Exploring collectivity, mutuality, and reciprocity, these and other works in the exhibition (Priscilla Otani, Valérie Hallier) speak to sociality as a condition of artmaking and to the relations and networks that form in the pursuit of an artistic life. Artists, as many do in this exhibition, turn to their friends or befriend strangers when exploring subjects as varied as leisure and joy (Kariny Padilla and Elise Rasmussen); finding community and care (Shia Conlon, Georgia Lale, Annika Sarin); the alienating effects of capitalism and technology (Elisabeth Smolarz and Angie Waller); and interspecies love and human loss (Super Futures Haunt Qollective).Taking a turn toward the abstract, Luiza Kurzyna and Shirin Towfiq and Bryan Truitt create sculptures that evince friendship’s slippery, hard-to-pin-down relationality. 

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Eriola Pira is the Curator and Director of Programs at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School where she has organized public programs, exhibitions, and publications. Curatorial projects include new commissions and exhibitions of Adelita Husni Bey, Chimurenga, Conflictorium, Dean Erdmann, Black Quantum Futurism, Maria Hupfield, Suzanne Kite, Underground Resistance, and Anna Martine Whitehead. Previously, as Director of Programs, Pira led Art in General's international collaborations, public programs, and fellowships building on her professional networks and experiences as Program Director and Curator at the artist-founded NARS Foundation, and as Program Director at The Foundation for Culture and Society. In these and other capacities, she has initiated and organized international exhibitions, publications, symposia, and fellowships in partnership with museums, foundations, and artist-run spaces worldwide. A native of Albania, Pira holds an M.A. in Visual Culture Theory from New York University and is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a Global Cultural Leadership Fellowship, and a Jeannette K. Watson Fellowship. 

View the Press Release here.

Read the Curator Essay here.

Photography: Matthew Sherman