Pink Schlemmer by Oliver Husain

Oskar Schlemmer 1925/Oliver Husain 2025

Pink Schlemmer
by Oliver Husain

September 12 – October 17, 2025
Free Opening Reception: September 11, 2025, 5:30 – 7pm
Goethe Space, Toronto

Commissioned & presented by the Goethe-Institut Toronto

In 2024, an old 16mm print of Man and Mask: Oskar Schlemmer and the Bauhaus Stage surfaced from storage at the Goethe-Institut Toronto. The 1969 dance film is an interpretation of Oskar Schlemmer’s choreographies conceived at the Bauhaus University in Dessau around 1925. Through chemical deterioration of the aging print, the film is now awash in vibrant pink and magenta hues.

Curator Jutta Brendemühl offered Frankfurt-born Toronto artist and filmmaker Oliver Husain the 16mm material for a carte blanche treatment. Husain and his collaborators use this flamboyant tint as both clue and entry point to reimagine Schlemmer’s dances, ideas, and impact. Through its colourful deterioration, the film invites unexpected readings of early modernist dance and performance art history. International (notably Indian Bauhaus) connections and queer perspectives unfold through a short film, celluloid installation, and lecture-performances that explore the intersection of personal and collective memory in still and moving image arts.

Pink Schlemmer (2025), a 12-minute digital video and film installation, transforms accidental deterioration into deliberate artistic intervention. Artist and filmmaker Oliver Husain, working with dancer Tanveer Alam, sound designer Matt Smith, costume designer Laura Honsberger, mask creator Tim Manalo, and assistant Alex Turgeon, creates a contemporary dialogue with Schlemmer’s visionary Triadic Ballet that once revolutionized theatrical performance at the Bauhaus school. As Schlemmer himself observed: “Art should not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.”

Free Public Programs at the Goethe-Institut:

Opening Reception & Conversation with Artist Oliver Husain
September 11, 2025, 5:30 – 7pm

More TBA!

About the Artist

Oliver Husain is a Toronto-based artist and filmmaker whose projects frequently emerge as collaborations with other artists and friends, often beginning with a fragment of history, a rumor, a personal encounter or a distant memory. He employs a wide range of cinematic languages, technical experiments and visual pleasures—including dance, puppetry, costume, and special effects—to animate his research and fold viewers into complex narrative frameworks. His work has been featured at prestigious venues including the Forum Expanded section of the Berlinale International Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, Experimenta Festival Bangalore, and major exhibitions from ICA Los Angeles to Remai Modern, Saskatoon. Husain has collaborated extensively with the Goethe-Institut on several significant projects, using this platform to foster cultural dialogue between German, Canadian and South Asian artistic traditions. His work is represented by Susan Hobbs, Toronto, and Clages, Cologne.

Part of the Goethe-Institut Toronto Focus “Still Moving”

Thank you to LIFT Liaison of Independent Filmmakers; Asad Raza, Vice-Presidential Special Advisor, Public Art, UTM; and CSACH the Centre of South Asian Critical Humanities at the University of Toronto Mississauga, where the film was shot.

Follow and tag the Goethe-Institut on Facebook, Instagram #GoetheTO #PinkSchlemmer @oliverhusain

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