DESSAU.- Andrea Acosta and Ruth Evans will live and work within the context of the Residency programme in the Masters’ Houses in Dessau in 2021. They were selected from over 500 applicants in an open call process for the Bauhaus Residency of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and the GfZK (Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig). Their artistic experience is characterised by very specific approaches and precision in dealing with material and its historical levels. During their stay in Dessau, unusual hybrids will be created on the occasion of the Foundation’s annual theme of “Infrastructure”, involving visitors and citizens of Dessau-Roßlau in the works and their process of creation. The results and work processes will be presented at Gropius House.

Andrea Acosta was born in Bogotá (Colombia) and currently lives and works in Berlin. With her artistic research approach she studies the biography of the Masters’ Houses on the basis of their building fabric. In the process, the material becomes an actor and the artist a tracker in Dessau and its surroundings. In places where human intervention in nature is evident, such as urban spaces, construction sites or coal mines, she observes moments of change, exhaustion and renewed growth. Her texts, photos, sculptures and installations ultimately tell “the biography of things” and invite viewers to explore them.

Rita Evans lives and works in Great Britain. For the artist with British-Canadian roots space is a stage, for which she develops objects from ceramics, textiles, water, wood and metal that move at the intersection of sculpture, display and instrument. The musical performance lives from the communication between the artists, who play the same instrument together. Evans combines ancient and ritualistic music traditions with random and spontaneous musical choices, matching the instruments to the characteristics of the site and the interests of the artists.

The programme is a cooperation project of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and the GfZK. The two artists were selected by a jury consisting of Regina Bittner (director and CEO a. i. of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation) Franciska Zólyom (director and curator of the GfZK), Susanne Weiß (museologist, curator and art mediator) and Florian Strob (curator of the Bauhaus Residency).