Ikvot
Ikvot (Hebrew for “traces”) is a text-based installation that builds on Yaakov (2015), Laufer’s long-term engagement with the life and work of Yochanan Ben-Yaakov (1913–2003). Born in Berlin and exiled to British Mandate Palestine in 1933, Ben-Yaakov became known for his public sculptures and murals, and was a significant figure in the artistic landscape of Kibbutz Hazorea—where Laufer grew up decades later.
In Ikvot, Laufer revisits fragments of Ben-Yaakov’s handwritten personal recollections found in the archives. Through a process that is both intimate and layered, she carefully retraces his script, following his lines in her own hand. Her text overlaps, repeats, and diverges—mirroring the associative, sometimes disorienting rhythm of the original. The work engages not only with personal memory but also with the complexity of linguistic and historical inheritance: both Laufer and Ben-Yaakov worked in Hebrew and German, but from opposite direction.
At Kunstverein Nürnberg, the work is installed on a wall marked by its own layered history. Designed in the 1920s by Otto Ernst Schweizer in the spirit of Neue Sachlichkeit, the wall once bore an abstract relief by Carl Grossberg—later replaced by a Nazi-era mural of a “milchmaid.” Traces of both remain. Laufer’s work overlays this charged surface, partially obscuring and echoing it. In doing so, Ikvot becomes a site of dialogue across time—between generations, aesthetics, ideologies, and the elusive terrain of remembrance.
Photos © Lukas Pürmayr
