Gropius House || Fictional
June 28–September 20, 2020
The new exhibition of the Bauhaus Residency, entitled Gropius House || Fictional, is on view until September 20, 2020 in the Directors’ House of the ensemble of the Masters’ Houses in Dessau. The poet Sujata Bhatt and the sculptor Inge Mahn have created new works for the interior and exterior of Gropius House. In a unique way, their works Paul Klee’s House, Dessau and Dwelling relate to the architecture of the World Cultural Heritage Site in Dessau and the annual theme of the foundation Habitat.
Inge Mahn: Dwelling
In her work for Gropius House, the sculptor Inge Mahn started from an observation she made during her stay in the historic Schlemmer House: “The many doors in the house (over 30 in total!) are somewhat confusing because they contradict each other to some extent. Naturally, it is well thought out when each room is connected with the neighbouring room and all the rooms can be reached from the hallway, but the idea of several doors being opened by several people at the same time is strange because they might collide,” as Mahn describes her experience.
The many doors that once existed in the original Gropius House, which was destroyed in 1945, were not realized anew in the reconstruction of the ensemble of Masters’ Houses in 2014: for the use as an exhibition building, the choice was intentionally made to not recreate the original layout. In her installation in Gropius House, Inge Mahn recreates those doors—albeit in an alienated way and abstracted in plaster—and banishes them from the house once again.
Sujata Bhatt: Paul Klee’s House, Dessau
For many years, the poet Sujata Bhatt has dealt with a renowned German artists’ colony: Worpswede near Bremen. With the Masters’ Houses in Dessau, Sujata Bhatt has now dedicated herself to the perhaps most famous artists’ colony of the 1920s. In her newly created poems, Bhatt examines in particular the relationship between animals, human beings, and architecture.
Visitors are invited to take three new poems by Sujata Bhatt with them on their way through the Masters’ Houses. The poet also provides insights into her work process with handwritten versions of the texts. In the garden of Gropius House, Sujata Bhatt presents some results of her intensive research, which shapes her work process in addition to the sensual experience on site. The passages that she selected from Paul Klee’s diaries thus become a sort of third voice, which references the Bauhaus Master’s house at the other side of the ensemble.
The Artists
Inge Mahn (born in Teschen, today Cieszyn, Poland, in 1943) was a master student of Joseph Beuys at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and taught sculpture herself for decades, most recently at the Kunsthochschule Weißensee, Berlin. Since participating in the documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972, her works have been exhibited round the world.
The poet Sujata Bhatt (born in Ahmedabad, India, in 1956) grew up in India and the United States and studied at the University of Iowa. She has been living in Bremen for many years. Her poems move based on her biography—between continents and different cultures and languages. Having received many awards, her texts are read as part of the school curriculum in Great Britain and many Commonwealth nations.
The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation is a non-profit foundation under public law. It is institutionally funded by the German Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the State of Saxony-Anhalt, and the City of Dessau-Roßlau. The Bauhaus Residency Programme Gropius House || Fictional is a cooperation project of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation with the Literaturhaus Berlin and the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig.
