The gesture of grafting refers to severing and reconnecting, breaking and repairing, composing things from mismatching parts as occurs in writing a text, editing a film, immigrating to another country, voicing a disagreement, regretting the doings of the past self or working side-by-side with other artists. Every such instance requires dealing with a contact zone where the borders of things meet. The contact zone between an organism and an implanted organ, or a cited fragment and a text renders the border as an extended space of negotiation, rather than a line of delineation. For example, when one plant is grafted onto another, the border between rootstock and scion becomes a locus of intensive exchange of biological signals between the two individuals. Perhaps, the very term “individual” is invalidated by the context of grafting, as it is precisely the broken pieces and the process of cellular division that constitute a new living entity. For being a product of mismatching parts, which ongoingly negotiate their differences, a grafted life form can be better named a “dividual”.

The sculptures in the exhibition represent a recursive use of citationality characteristic of grafting: cut out from their original context, they are first grafted together and later onto the other artworks at Times Art Center Berlin.