‘bauhaus imaginista’ left the national framework of the Bauhaus centenary celebration, seeing modernity as a cosmopolitan project that emerged through transcultural exchange of the sort that continues to have an impact today. Over four chapters, the exhibition discussed avant-garde art schools in India and Japan as parallel histories of modern educational reforms (‘Corresponding With’). It traced the study of pre-modern crafts at the Bauhaus and by Bauhaus students in North and Central American exile as well as their politicization in post-revolutionary Mexico, independent Morocco and Brazil (‘Learning From’). It showed not only adaptations of Bauhaus design approaches in China, Nigeria and the Soviet Union (‘Moving Away’), but also the innovative use of media at the Bauhaus, which impacts art and pop culture even today (‘Still Undead‘).
Following exhibitions, symposia and workshops in 2018 in Hangzhou, Kyoto and Tokyo, Saõ Paulo, Lagos, New Delhi, Rabat, New York and Moscow, in co-operation with the local Goethe Institutes and other partners, for the centenary all four chapters were brought together under one roof for the first time in Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt. From September 2019 to January 2020, the whole exhibition was presented at Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern.
Questions of transcultural modernity were also continued until 2020 with new exhibitions and research with Nottingham Contemporary and SALT Istanbul.
Lanched in 2018, the development of the project can be observed in the online journal www.bauhaus-imaginista.org, which offers a platform for artists and researchers around the world to exchange views and ideas.
