Goshka Macuga -
stairway to nowhere

May 24, 2019-August 4, 2019
@ Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover

Goshka Macuga's (*1967 in Warsaw, lives and works in London) artistic practice is based on historical and archival research, through which she repeatedly detects ruptures, pitfalls, and ambiguities in supposedly linear narratives. As an artist, she simultaneously assumes the role of historian, curator, and designer in various collaborations. The focus of her exhibition on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus is the changing ideological positioning and political instrumentalization of the Bauhaus from a historical and contemporary perspective. Macuga artistically shows the opposing worldviews within which the Bauhaus institution was located, or located itself - from early spiritual, socialist, Marxist ideologies to apolitical or capitalist attitudes. The critical examination of the representational function of design plays a special role in the exhibition, not least on the basis of iconic designs from the environment of the three directors of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer, and Mies van der Rohe, who also embody different views of the Bauhaus.

Curators: Christina Végh, Lea Altner
Photos: Raimund Zakowski