GROUP EXHIBITION

Oddkin, a term coined by Donna Jeanne Haraway in 2016, names kinships that refuse traditional genealogies, forming unexpected, generative alliances that thrive in the liminal spaces between self and other. Here, artists assemble a complex web of connections: disparate, yet entwined, rupturing the distinctions between individual and collective, past and present. Kinship is not inherited; it is performed, negotiated, and nurtured—over fences, through trust, mentorship, friendship, and shared vulnerability.

The fence itself is both literal and symbolic: a threshold where histories converge and dissolve. In his Paris Diary, Walter Benjamin observed how a tree’s branches extended beyond the high walls of a construction site, clinging to the fence as if by accident. For him, this small act of reaching across a boundary contained a spark of magic, even dissent—the possibility of revolution, empathy, and connection. To look ‘over the fence,’ Benjamin reminds us, is to encounter what lies beyond control or enclosure. It is also to awaken what he called the optical unconscious: ways of seeing that emerge only when perception is recalibrated, when hidden connections come into view.

Separation, then, becomes connection. Barriers become sites of encounter. Fences mark not only division, but the charged space of passage—the crossings, frictions, and revelations that animate kinship. In this exhibition, that porous, relational energy pulses across generations and practices, threading through symbols, myths, and personal histories.

Not imposing, not didactic, but catalytic: a spectral pulse threading through the artists’ gestures, attentions, and choices. His legacy lingers in the restless curiosity of each studio, each work, a reminder that creation is never solitary, but always choral, dialogical, carried forward in trust.

Über den Zaun challenges the myth of the lone genius. It unfolds as a dynamic ecology of oddkin: a joyous, disorderly constellation of creators who amplify one another’s voices, intertwine difference, and weave shared meaning. Collaboration is not compromise, but a generative act: the work of making together, thinking together, caring together.

The collaboration between THK Gallery in Cape Town and DOD Gallery in Cologne extends this relationality across oceans. This is not merely a cross-continental exchange of artworks, but a deliberate act of attention and care. The galleries themselves become participants in the ecology of oddkin, sustaining networks of mentorship, influence, and generosity. Ideas ripple across borders, practices intermingle, and the exhibition becomes a living experiment in connection.

Every studio visit, every discussion, every shared meal contributes to the fabric of the show. Oddkin, friendship, inspiration, and influence converge, over fences, across cities, in the subtle energies of care and attention that make collective creativity possible.

Über den Zaun is a manifesto of relationality. It insists that art is not only made, but lived, shared, and sustained through networks of kinship that honor difference while weaving it into something collectively vital, radiant, and generative.