Today when the flow of ideas and people with varied backgrounds and experiences have become a consistent driver of innovation and creativity in the arts, the history of modern art of great nations is a history of migration, transnational exchange and global turmoil. The book of art Ruskin talks about now goes beyond national parameters to include global flux, exchange and cultural variability.

This mutability and cross-cultural ethos underscored the IFA Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen touring exhibition Artspace Germany shown at the VM Art Gallery. The show comprised works by 14 artists who have lived and worked in Germany but who were born in the Netherlands, England, Switzerland, Turkey, the US, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Belgium, Australia, Korea, Italy and Poland. This is the first IFA exhibition in a transnational form and portrays Germany as a `space of art` attracting and nurturing cultural diversity and new directions in art. Today German art is defined not just by German artists but also by those who immigrated to the country. The selected artists belong to the first generation of immigrants who voluntarily decided to live in Germany. They taught at German art institutions and put their stamp on the creative life, together with their German colleagues.

The diverse selection on display includes paintings, sculptures, photographs and installation art by Armando, Tony Cragg,Marianne Eigenheer, Ayse Erkmen, Christine Hill, Magdalena Jetelova, Per Kirkeby, Joseph Kosuth, Marie-Jo Lafontaine, Simone Mangos, Nam June Paik, Giuseppe Spagnulo, Wawrzynice Tokarski and Herman de Vries.

One of the world`s foremost sculptors Cragg (Sir Anthony Douglas Cragg) is British. He moved to Germany in 1977. Constantly exploring new relations between people and the material world, the artist says, `I see a material or an object as having a balloon of information around it.` His laminated plastic sculpture, `Flotsam` a fluid mass of globular organic shapes, answers to this description. In the 1980s, Cragg became acclaimed for sculptures of found objects, fragments of furniture, household items of different materials, plastic toys, etc.

which were often chosen for their colour and which, laid out on the floor or fixed to a wall, together created and portrayed forms recognisable from everyday life. The wall installation `More And More And More` is the case in point.

A black-and-white painting titled `Flag` by the Dutch artist Armando, who lives in Berlin and Amsterdam, references the German occupation of the Netherlands. His childhood memories of the Nazi transition camps, the suffering of the victims and the cruelty of the Nazi camp guards near his home in Amersfoort, scarred him for the rest of his life.

One of the great masters of Italian sculpture, a formally-trained ceramicist,Spagnulo was a professor at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart from 1987-2000. He created large-scale abstract sculptures that explore industrial processes and reflect the experience of the foundry, the steel mill and blast furnaces, literally bearing traces of the danger and vigorous labour that went into their production. His sculpture `Cerchio Spezzato` a twisted steel band, typifies restrained strength.

No artist has had a greater influence in imagining and realising the artistic potential of video and television than Paik, a Korean American who moved to Germany and became a member of the Fluxus Movement in 1962. His vast array of installations, videotapes, global television productions, films and performances, has reshaped our perceptions of the temporal image in contemporary art. The exhibit `Candle TV` establishes the ironic interplay between nature and technology that runs through all of Paik`s work while the internet dweller, created out of antique television sets, laser disc player, Polaroid and surveillance cameras, presages the internet age.

The artefact `Here And There` by the Turkish artist Erkmen, who lives in Istanbul and Berlin, consists of 16 trapezoid metal bodies formerly parts of old cars of different colours. They can be scattered here and there, as the title of the artwork suggests, or be harmoniously arranged into an attractive arc.

Berlin-based South African Breitz`s video installations explore media stereotypes to address the way identities are created and performed. Her dual channel video `Factum Kang`, portraying identical twins reflect her concern with the instability of identity in an age of flux.

Star-studded and diverse this mega exhibition embodying the strengths of contemporary art, globalisation, urbanism, technology, identity issues and migration illustrates the internationalising of German art scape.

Here one wonders, how can art history be written by focusing on exchange and cultural changeability and not drawing on national parameters? The answer lies in curator Ursula Zellar`s catalogue essays, National culture a discontinued model? `National culture is under pressure to change and wanderers between the cultures that define the transition towards eclecticism and coexistence on which this show stands,` she writes.

`Artspace Germany` was shown at the VM Art Gallery from December 20, 2017 to January 17, 2018