Sofia Dona, Mara Genschel and Andrea Acosta. Gropius House || Fictional

July 8–November 14, 2021
Gropius House, Ebertallee 57, 06846 Dessau-Roßlau

Sofia Dona, Mara Genschel and Andrea Acosta
Gropius House || Fictional

Under the title Gropius House || Fictional, the new exhibition of the Bauhaus Residence will be shown from July 8 to November 14, 2021 in the directors’ house of the Meisterhaussiedlung in Dessau. Over the past weeks and months, the artists Sofia Dona and Andrea Acosta as well as the writer Mara Genschel have dealt intensively with the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Masters’ Houses in Dessau from the perspective of infrastructures, the annual theme of the Bauhaus Dessau. The result is new, impressive works that bring the often hidden foundations of everyday life to light. In terms of content, they are devoted to the playful to brutal relationship between man and animal, the claimed mastery of the historical Bauhaus and the stones with which the master houses were once built.

The works by Sofia Dona and Mara Genschel can be seen at Gropius House until September 12, 2021, the work by Andrea Acosta until November 14, 2021.

Gropius House || Fictional
2020 – 2022
Artworks and artistic processes create specific, new accesses to the world and are fictional in this sense: the term is derived from the Latin verb “fingere” and means nothing else than “forming, shaping, conceiving.” Fiction thus does not entail first and foremost the creation of a separate world, but can likewise denote shaping the existing world, the real. Fiction is thus also a way to gain distance, to interrogate realities, to see them anew.

The artists
Sofia Dona is an artist and architect. She studied architecture at the National Technical University of Athens and art in public space at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. She was awarded the Architecture Prize of the City of Munich in 2018 and the Fulbright Scholarship for Artists in 2015. Sofia Dona has realised projects between architecture and art worldwide in various cities, such as Athens, Leipzig, Detroit, Los Angeles, as well as in the border region between Tijuana and San Diego. Since 2018, she has been co-curator of the queer-feminist film festival “Aphrodite*” in Athens, and as a member of the group “Errands,” she participates in international exhibitions.

Mara Genschel is a writer and performer. She studied at Detmold University of Music and Deutsches Literaturinstitut Leipzig. Her first volume of poetry was published in 2008, and since then, she has preferred to work on independent publication concepts and performances. International invitations have taken her to Hong Kong, Bucharest, Iowa and Johannesburg, among other places. Her most recent books are “Cute Gedanken” (2017) and “Gablenberger Tagblatt” (2018). She also experiments with audio formats, especially in the field of new music. Most recently: “Salon Dilletantisme” (SWR 2020) and the video work “Das narzisstische Publikum” (2021). She lives and works in Berlin.

Andrea Acosta was selected from over 500 applicants in an open call procedure for the Bauhaus Residency of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig. Her artistic practice is characterised by very specific approaches in the precise handling of material and its historical levels. Her works, which often deal with the complex relationships between nature and culture, have already been shown in Berlin, Bogotá, Bilbao, Paris, Saint Petersburg and Tokyo.

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.