Eda Aslan, Hanne Darboven, Hans Haacke, Saodat Ismailova and Helena Uambembe
July 19 – August 30, 2026
Cooperation between the Overbeck Society and St. Petri zu Lübeck
Water defies a clear form of appearance – it comes and goes, condenses, evaporates, and leaves traces. In the tension between visibility and disappearance, materiality and change, Permeable Condensation brings together artistic positions that explore water as a material presence as well as a medium of social, political, and affective relationships. As water changes its form from solid to liquid and gaseous, this exhibition is dedicated to the intermediate states: the moment when the invisible becomes visible, the transition from vapor to droplets, from absence to presence. Works by Eda Aslan, Hanne Darboven, Hans Haacke, Saodat Ismailova, and Helena Uambembe examine processes such as condensation, evaporation, and exhaustion, understood as expressions of this element that defies a fixed form.
The exhibition title Permeable Condensation refers to a paradox: Condensation describes a process of densification, of becoming material, while permeability means porosity, openness, and transition. In their connection, these terms describe a state in which boundaries become unstable – where the condensed simultaneously dissolves again, where inside and outside, body and environment, visible and invisible merge into one another. Water is not only a physical phenomenon but also a medium that carries memory, emotion, and power. The works gathered in the exhibition move between dryness and abundance, between control and deprivation, and ask how water shapes landscapes, penetrates bodies, and determines political realities.
Water appears as a substance defined by relationality – as something that only emerges through its connections, circulations, and transitions. In its ability to switch between physical states, water makes processes visible that escape linear control. In its chemical, scientific, and political entanglements, water is both essential and epistemic: It stores, transmits, and transforms meanings, affects, and power relations. Its distribution is unequal, its access regulated, its dynamics often unpredictable. From this perspective, water is an active component of social, ecological, and economic systems in which fragility and dependency are inextricably intertwined. At the center of the exhibition is the tension between liquidity and power: Water as a life-giving resource, as a connecting element, and at the same time as a politically and ecologically contested commodity.
Curated by Paula Kommoss and Talia Walther
PROGRAM FOR THE EXHIBITION
OPENING
Saturday, July 18, 2026
Overbeck Society
2-4 PM, Soft-opening
2 PM, Dialogical tour with Paula Kommoss
2:30 PM, Children's workshop Run Water Run
with Tahnee Eltze
St. Petri zu Lübeck
4 PM, Performance by Jaq Lisboa
5 PM, Welcome by Anne Freudenberg-Klopp, Pastor
Introduction by Paula Kommoss, Director and Talia Walther, Co-curator
LECTURE
Thursday, July 23, 2026
Overbeck Society
4 PM, Lecture by Prof. Dr. Mojib Latif
TOUR
Saturday, August 28
St. Petri zu Lübeck
6 PM, Tour of the exhibition with Talia Walther