Fallen from the Sky

Artists: Yalda Afsah, Maximiliane Baumgartner, Richard Frater, Gerrit Frohne-Brinkmann, Annika Kahrs, Almut Linde, Hemansingh Lutchmun

A group of people gazes up at the sky. High above, a flock of birds cuts a silhouette against the light, their movements appearing random yet part of a common rhythm. Suddenly, individual birds break away from the formation, spiral backwards with outstretched wings, and dive downwards in a seemingly uncontrolled descent—only to catch themselves and rise again.

The group exhibition FALLEN FROM THE SKY featuring works by Yalda Afsah, Maximiliane Baumgartner, Richard Frater, Gerrit Frohne-Brinkmann, Annika Kahrs, Almut Linde and Hemansingh Lutchmun, on view this summer at the Overbeck-Gesellschaft and the Kulturkirche St. Petri, takes such images as its starting point—moments of rupture, of losing control, but also of return and resistance. It explores, in layered and multifaceted ways, the relationship between humans and birds—a relationship marked by contradictions: between fascination and appropriation, closeness and distance, projection and reality.

At its core lies our deeply-rooted impulse to categorize, name, and dominate nature—and with it, animals. But the bird remains a symbol of the unattainable: a creature of the air, it eludes the logic of the ground. It is within this tension that the artistic positions presented in the exhibition find their strength. They reveal how birds have been interpreted, revered, hunted, or instrumentalized in various cultural and historical contexts—and how these readings continue to shape our relationship with the natural world today. The works on view open up perspectives on pressing ecological and societal challenges. Birds appear not only as symbols of freedom or the soul, but also as witnesses to climate change, environmental destruction, and social alienation. In interactions between humans and birds, the fragility of the relationship is revealed—one that must be renegotiated in our present moment.

But the image of the falling bird is more than a bleak warning. The artists in FALLEN FROM THE SKY embrace ambivalence: they portray birds not only as victims of human intervention, but also as beings that assert themselves, that adapt, and that persist despite the many looming threats—sometimes visible, sometimes only audible, like a distant call. In many of the works, the bird becomes a medium through which contemporary issues are addressed. At times, it appears as a mythical figure, and at others as a biological subject, or as a surface on which to project cultural longings. The artistic perspectives are wide-ranging: from confronting colonial views of animals and nature to engaging with current questions about species extinction, migration, and the role of humans in ecological systems.

Taking to the skies and at the same time bringing us face to face with the fractures of our time, this exhibition encourages us to reconsider familiar images and pay closer attention to what is changing, what is unstable, and what has already fallen. To focus on vulnerability and complexity is to align with multispecies feminist theorist Donna Haraway’s call to stay with the trouble—to engage with difficult realities rather than avoid them. FALLEN FROM THE SKY is therefore both a reflection on human-bird relations and an invitation to reconsider their role as active participants within interconnected ecological networks. In this way, the exhibition proposes the possibility of a different way of relating to life on Earth, attentive to the interdependencies that shape our shared environment.

Curated by Paula Kommoss