Sonia Delaunay, Swimsuits, 1928.
To celebrate 100 years of Bauhaus, the group Decorating Dissidence is bringing together performance artists, visual artists, community groups and craft practitioners to respond to the women’s weaving workshop with an exhibition at London’s Stour Space until November.
The Weave It! exhibition considers the legacies of crafting and weaving from modernism to the contemporary, both celebrating and challenging the avant-garde work of the weaving workshop.
Beautification, Camilla Tønder Rasmussen 2017, Photographer: CamillaTønder Rasmussen.
The women of the Bauhaus had no real other choice but to work in weaving. As painter, Oskar Schlemmer, said in 1920: ‘Where there’s wool, there’s also a woman who will spin it, even if it is just to pass the time’. The weaving workshop that emerged in the Bauhaus was artistically progressive but lacking in gender parity. Yet, many made it a radical site of experimentation and exploration including Anni Albers, Gunta Stölzl, Michiko Yamawaki, and Lilly Reich.
The exhibition begins with a party on 1st November, ticketed but open to the public, with performances by Raisa Kabir and Julie Rose Bower and a screening of the documentary Güzel Derman (devised, directed and produced by Nataša Cordeaux, Cheyenne Ritfeld & Ricarda Theobald).
Seungwon Jung, Siccar Point, 2019, hand knotted tapestry, steel.
Decorating Dissidence is an interdisciplinary project exploring the political, aesthetic and conceptual qualities of feminine-coded arts from modernism to the contemporary. It brings together art practitioners, makers, curators, activists and academics to break down disciplinary boundaries and find new ways to critically engage with feminist art history. One of the projects aims is to reveal and promote the lasting legacies of marginalised women artists who worked at the dissident intersections between established mediums and modes of modern art.
For more information visit www.decoratingdissidence.com
For more on the Bauhaus, the ‘Bauhaus & Modern Textiles in the Netherlands’ exhibition can be seen at the TextielMuseum until 3 November 2019. This exhibition is covered in Selvedge Issue 91 Luxe.
