Autor: wojtek

Photo: archiwum Rolanda Bilickiego

 

Roland Bilicki was born on 07.06.1984 in Olsztyn in a Roma family (Polish Roma). He has secondary education, but as he says – a higher life education.

 

He has always wanted to express himself musically on stage. Inspired by his cousin, Roland learned to play guitar as a child. One day, his dad surprised him with a question: which instrument do you want to play, the accordion or the violin? He chose the violin.

 

Nowadays Roland performs not only with his own bands (he currently has two). He has also worked with opera singers, Alicja Węgorzewska, Leszek Świdziński, Sylwia Lorenz and the band “Enej”. He played with jazz bands in Germany, as well as the Olsztyn Philharmonic Orchestra during the New Year’s Eve gala in 2019.

 

Apart from music, Roland is interested in cooking – he usually experiments with his children. He also likes sports. He trains kyokushin, a bit of kickboxing, and works out at the gym. He loves nature and enjoys walking in the forest.

 

 

 

Photo. Marlena Lena Żerkowska, source

 

Amadea Noemi Łakatosz, born 21.03.1997 in Poznań, comes from a Roma family that has always been involved in art. She graduated from the General Jadwiga Zamoyska Secondary School XXV in Poznań, with a focus on humanities and theatre. She also completed a course in floristry at Cosinus Post-Secondary School, where she now also attends an occupational therapy course.

 

She is interested in visual arts, acting, psychology, photography and dancing. She has been a kids animator for over 6 years. She does face painting, conducts art, theatre and film workshops – for example, on the Utubersi platform. She eagerly engages in social activities and artistic projects, both in Poland and abroad, e.g. in Austria or Romania.

 

Her artworks and photographs have been repeatedly presented at numerous local and national exhibitions, including the Provincial Office, the Aula of Adam Mickiewicz University, the House of Brittany, Wilson Park, 2.pietro Gallery, the Ethnographic Museum in Poznan, as well as the Prudnik House of Culture.

 

The artist often donates her paintings to charities, e.g. to fairs or charity auctions organised by the Amici Association for Children and Their Parents. Together with her brother, Delfin Łakatosz, she runs a YouTube channel with more than 15,000 viewers.

 

In 2018, she joined a cabaret formation Nie do Pary. The group’s performances gained big recognition from the audience and were awarded in many competitions. Since 2018, Amadea attends the Blancari Artistic Academy, where she practices oriental dance under the supervision of her instructor, Blanca Rische. Her dance debut took place on the stage of the Asz Theatre at the Dąbrówka House of Culture in Poznań.

 

In 2018 she joined the Cudzysłów theatre group and performed in the Diamond Swing show at the Zamek Cultural Centre and at the Łejery Common Stage in Poznań.

 

Link to the performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkz5bxJeN_0

 

Amadea Łakatosz is a laureate of many professional competitions and a long-term holder of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration scholarship.

 

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As we can read in the encyclopedia: “plein-air” [fr.(en) plen air ‘under the open sky’] is simply painting outdoors, directly from nature, in open space. Outdoor painting was initiated at the beginning of the 19th century by the English school. It became popular at the end of the 19th century, thanks to the Impressionists and then included in the artistic education. Nowadays, plein-airs is also a term used for a stay of a group in one place, where they create artistic work. Fundacja Dom Kultury’s plein-airs refer to a post-war tradition of group outdoor painting, and at the same time, overcome one of their unfavorable features. Namely, they draw on thegroup-creative traditions – the people participating in the workshops simultaneously bond with each other, overcoming elitism. The workshops are attended by local residents, participants of “Kłodzka Roma”, a Roma culture festival and specialists in other fields who are leading workshops as a part of the festival.

 

An important point of reference for our initiative were the plein-airs and an international artistic residency program “Jaw Dikh!” in Czarna Góra. The initiative is attended by Roma andnon-Roma authors, curators and theorists and has been organized since 2011 by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas. The curator and artist has shown that the magic circle can be broken and the idea of outdoor painting can be used as a binder between different words.

We were in Krzysztof Gil’s studio just before the opening of the exhibition They call me Gypsy, though that’s not my name / The more you trim the bigger it becomes.

 

The Gdańsk group exhibition took place in two locations – it was divided into a part where we could see the works of many artists and a part with Gil’s individual exhibition, forming a sub-narrative. During our visit we learned what the process of documenting the subject matter of the works looks like: searching and analysis; critical reading of historical, ethnographic, cultural, pop-cultural knowledge constructs, to which Gil then refers in his works.

 

Who doesn’t know the melody that obtrusively plays in your heads – it is the Caje Sukarije song interpreted in 1999 by the duo Kayah & Bregovič: “They call me Gypsy although that’s not my name / Because who cares when the name doesn’t match”. In the first words of the text about the exhibition They Call Me Gypsy… The curator Ania Batko points out that it is not an exhibition about the Roma, their history or culture, but about the construct of a “gypsy” – ‘a made-up character who never existed’. The gypsy is here a symbol of appropriation, cultural colonialism, stories and imagination spun on the border between what is Polish and what is Roma.

 

The gallery space adapted by Gil looks like a cross between a circus fairy’s tent and a noble study of curiosities of an amateur collector from the 19th century. In both cases, the constructed image of the Roma gypsy is as true as it is completely false. The pointing out of the colonial “difference” by the “pariah” may be a mockery of the way in which the colonised are seen; how their representation is created; an element of the minority’s game with the majority, which simultaneously carries their image and uses it in its own interest.

 

They call me Gypsy, though that’s not my name
Curator: Ania Batko

 

Technical cooperation: Krzysztof Gil

 

Gdańsk City Gallery 1, 2 (Piwna 27/29, Powroźnicza 13/15)
16.07-26.09.2021

We were in Krzysztof Gil’s studio just before the opening of the exhibition They call me Gypsy, though that’s not my name / The more you trim the bigger it becomes.

 

The Gdańsk group exhibition took place in two locations – it was divided into a part where we could see the works of many artists and a part with Gil’s individual exhibition, forming a
sub-narrative. During our visit we learned what the process of documenting the subject matter of the works looks like: searching and analysis; critical reading of historical, ethnographic, cultural, pop-cultural knowledge constructs, to which Gil then refers in his works.    More »

 

We visited Mirga-Tas’ studio with the camera just before her departure to Kosovo. We had the opportunity to watch her give the final touches to works that were later shown at the Autostrada Biennale. This remarkable young biennial was founded in 2014 and is a two-speed “highway”: an open biennial, which of course we can see every two years (Mirga-Tas is participating in the third iteration) and a permanent KFOR institution, where artists’ residencies take place and the process of preparing the exhibition is open to the public, making the creation of artworks a form of learning and critical thinking. This time, curators Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu and Joanna Warsza made “incompletion” the starting point of the biennale and its slogan became a question – “What if the journey…”. The time of the pandemic affected us all and everyone had their “unfinished business” through it. As the curators write: “What if the journey… is an exhibition about the two ends of the road that meet between host and guest, between diaspora and local, between infrastructure and intimacy. What if the journey… is also an exhibition about art as a way out of everyday traps. The exhibition will take you on a journey that starts in the centre of Pristina, continues along the Lumbardhi River in Prizren, and ends in an art bar in Peja. (…) “As long as there is a journey, there is hope,” says Valbona Zherka, an artist whose work has too often been marginalised in the past.(…) The Third Autostrada Biennale is an invitation to an incomplete journey in which art and survival are an emergency kit to travel to the present, to and from Kosovo – to Berlin, Istanbul, Warsaw and back. Or somewhere in between.”

 

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, together with a Roma activist Edis Galushim and members of the Prizren Roma community, covered a building with large-format portraits of remarkable Roma women, known both locally and internationally. Mirga-Tas’s collages are made from fragments of various fabrics: many of the fabrics come directly from the wardrobes of the women depicted and consist of pieces of skirts, scarves or shirts sewn onto curtains, drapes, bedding or rags. The materials used by the artist literally carry history, traces of life and use along with their energy. The canvases become the architectural basis of the artworks and at the same time the visual basis for creating feminist narratives. “Based on years of experience working with Roma communities in Roma settlements, I have noticed that Roma women are gradually emancipating themselves from patriarchal structures. More and more Roma women are active, they strive for change, they fight for education for their children, they want their voice to be heard in the usually very traditional Roma environment.” Mirga-Tas’s work raises many questions key for our times, including the crucial one: ‘What does minority feminism look like in a traditional community? Can there be mutual acculturation, and if so, how can the majority learn from the minority?” Finally, can working on identity, especially one rooted in the experience of injustice, be an affirmative and emancipatory strategy rather than a reductionist, isolating one?” The women featured in the artwork are : Shpresa Agushi Gnjilane -Advocate for Women’s Rights; Nicoleta Bitu – social activist from Bucharest; Zinet Galuszi – housewife from Prizren; Delaine Le Bas – artist from London; Esma Redzepova – legendary artist, singer from Skopje; Anonymous – representing all Roma women.

 

3rd Autostrada Biennale What If a Journey…

curators: Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu and Joanna Warsza Prisztina – 1.07.21-11.09.21

Prizren – 17.07.21-11.09.21

Peja – 19.07.21-11.09.21

We visited Mirga-Tas’ studio with the camera just before her departure to Kosovo. We had the opportunity to watch her give the final touches to works that were later shown at the Autostrada Biennale. This remarkable young biennial was founded in 2014 and is a two-speed “highway”: an open biennial, which of course we can see every two years (Mirga-Tas is participating in the third iteration) and a permanent KFOR institution, where artists’ residencies take place and the process of preparing the exhibition is open to the public, making the creation of artworks a form of learning and critical thinking.  More »