In April 1955, representatives from 29 Asian and African states gathered in Bandung, Indonesia to enact shared goals and solidarity after decolonisation from historical colonial powers. Spectres of Bandung is a research-based exhibition exploring this first large-scale Asian-African Conference that can be considered a catalyst of already existing political and cultural affiliations.

Bringing together photographs, paintings, films and archival material, the group show at the Gropius Bau unpacks the spirit of self-determination prevailing during the Bandung Conference.

After travelling to Bandung, the African-American journalist and writer Richard Wright published a book on the conference in 1956. Wright’s The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference details a world of shifting political power and became an important point of reference for the Gropius Bau exhibition. Historical and contemporary artistic positions attempt to recount the spectres of Bandung – an imagination of possibilities for historically subordinated parts of the world. This imagination revealed new ambivalences and complexities of joint struggles beyond historically-entrenched oppositions.