Over Land and Sea

Artists: Allora & Calzadilla, Louis d’Heudières & Nina Kuttler, Eliška Konečná, Teresa Solar Abboud

The group show Over Land and Sea tells of the migrant history of humanity, its present and future. In a tension between the tangible and the mythical, the animate and the industrial world, the works on display point to the vulnerability of human beings and, simultaneously, their inherent ability to change and transform. They encourage a humanistic reflection on the way we live today.

The starting point of the exhibition is Teresa Solar Abboud’s installation Osteoclast (I do not know how I came to be on board this ship, this navel of my ark), which has its first appearance in Germany. In large-format sculptures, the artist draws a parallel between bones—hollow structures, carriers of tissue, veins and cell communities—and ships—vehicles of migration, conveyers of people and knowledge. Unlike the enormous ships built and docked in Hamburg’s harbour, Solar Abboud’s kayaks bring the human body down to sea level, reminding us of our fragility when faced with the power of water. Inspired by bone flutes—the world’s oldest wind instrument—the artist evokes an analogy between people’s breath and the movement that the wind lends to boats on the ocean.

In her textile bas-reliefs, Eliška Konečná allegorically alludes to topics that also resonate with Solar Abboud’s installation and its references to escape routes across the sea. The artist is concerned with universal questions of existence, morality and desire. The figures in her triptych Thirst appear somewhat like timeless, ancient gods who are, nonetheless, bound to make human mistakes. While their hybrid bodies serve as an expression of their desire, they are, inevitably, likewise subjected to punishment. The depicted scenes, in which the figures are washing their bodies—apparently in search for forgiveness—juxtapose pain and guilt, resignation and acceptance. As the motif suggests here, water does not disappear, it rather evaporates and transforms.

The video work Raptor’s Rapture, by Allora & Callzadilla sets out from the early days of humanity and explores the formation of social bonds through music, the growth of populations and its territorial expansion. In the video, a flutist specializing in prehistoric instruments plays on a carved wing bone, one of the oldest musical instruments ever discovered, in the presence of a live griffon vulture. The acoustic trace generated by the flute emerges as a time capsule reaching us from the origins of music and language. 

Completing the circle, Nina Kuttler and Louis d’Heudières have developed a speculative vision of the future. Their new installation consisting of sound works and sculptures was created specifically for the project and centres on the extraction of a fictional mineral under questionable conditions with the aim of feeding it into the capitalist cycle. The mining of rare earths is a major intervention affecting the landscape and often rendering entire areas uninhabitable. Both climatic changes and the direct exploitation of natural resources are factors triggering migration. At the same time, the ongoing trade in goods and raw materials is part of the transaction network in which we, as members of capitalist society, inevitably find ourselves involved without moving our physical bodies.

Curated by Anna Nowak.

Kindly supported by Claussen-Simon-Stiftung.