Miesiąc: grudzień 2023

“We talk about ourselves, not someone else who just sees us from the sidelines. That is the re-enchanting of the world”. On the exhibition “Re-enchanting the World” by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas.

“Travelling Images”¹ – This is the title of Małgorzata Mirga-Tas’s works, which are being shown all over Europe in a ‘wandering’ way. After her participation in the Venice Biennale, the artist is not slowing down, her works are still being shown in prestigious galleries in Ferrara, Berlin, Gothenburg, Marseille, Seville and elsewhere. It is a tradition that the exhibition shown in the Polish Pavilion in Venice the following year is presented in the most famous art gallery in Poland – Zachęta – the National Gallery of Art. The exhibition “Re-enchanting the World” was open to visitors from 29 April to 23 July 2023. Art connoisseurs, as well as ordinary Varsovians and visitors, had the opportunity to immerse themselves in the artistic vision of the Roma world created by the artist. A world very different from the one known in traditional messages contained in publications, newspaper reports or other works of art, where the Roma personify the exotic ‘other’, the ‘stranger’, someone arousing anxiety and fear, someone we fear and therefore reflexively exclude. This essay is an attempt to outline the impact of artistic practices on socio-political mobilisation, and on changing the image of the Roma in Poland and internationally.

Roma artistic activity is increasingly seen and read through the prism of decolonisation – that is, in general, a reversal of the so far unequal power relations, and an attempt to speak for themselves with their own voice and thus construct political demands regarding the social, political and cultural situation and position of Roma in the countries of which they are citizens. Roma artists and their artistic practices are slowly but steadily rising in the public consciousness above the previous and stereotypical images of Roma created by non-Roma. However, their presence in the art world and this position was the result of many years of struggle. The relentless reproduction in art of the image of Roma as inferior and subordinate is also widely normalised, and the change in narrative is not infrequently met with opposition. Timea Junghaus (2014, 2015), among others, writes about the difficulty Roma artists had in building their position, especially in the second half of the 20th century, also emphasising the importance of the changes taking place in e.g. Central and Eastern Europe, and the role of the new Roma intelligentsia in this process. Her analysis was critical of the way in which knowledge about Roma is produced, both in the social sciences and in culture and art. But in this perception, it is art that is the field where symbolic violence of a particular kind takes place. The epistemological and, at the same time, physical colonisation of the Roma by majority societies consisted in creating images, images of Roma bodies in a specific way, in a spirit of subordination and inferiority, which ultimately meant dehumanisation, slavery and extermination. It took decades of work and efforts by various actors before we could speak of a positive paradigm shift in this field. It has been a difficult road.

This transformation, contestation of established power relations and mobility are the foundations of Roma mobilisation, taking various forms: political, ethnic, national, as well as artistic. Together they shape a process that Nicolae Gheorghe (1997), a Roma activist and intellectual, calls ethnogenesis. This means the empowerment of Roma communities and their taking a respected place in the social space. Art has accompanied this process from the very beginning. During the First Roma Congress, held more than 50 years ago in 1971, one of the important topics of discussion was the introduction of Roma symbols, such as the flag and the anthem. Issues related to Roma art also seem to be central to the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture², which was recently established.

The 2007 Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art saw the inauguration of the First Roma Pavilion, also known as the first conscious rebellion of the subaltern (Junghaus 2014, 34), which gained unquestionable publicity and provoked serious discussion on the subject. For this reason, it is worth noting that, despite appearances to the contrary, Roma art and politics have much in common. In both cases, one can see the minority’s desire for self-expression and representation through a medium controlled by the social majority. This medium, however, has previously reproduced discriminatory and harmful images of Roma, spreading a false, stereotypical image of this community. Both the Roma political and artistic movements are thus not only a sign of social change among the Roma, but also an expression of their desire to leave the place assigned to them by the majority and to enter into dialogue with it on an equal footing, while challenging its exclusive powers to control the minority and to shape the discourse on the minority.

For many years, however, there was no institution that cared about the cultural heritage of the Roma and its development, about the political and cultural recognition of the contribution of Roma communities to cultural development, either at national or pan-European level. The Roma themselves were deprived of the protection of this cultural resource, which would not be processed by non-Roma. There was no space for both cultural production, the stimulation of creativity and the interpretation of their culture. And this is not just about politics in the cultural arena, but about the status of minorities and the protection of cultural diversity as the foundation of democratic societies. Cultural and political recognition of minorities is an essential process for building cohesive societies built on multiculturalism, especially in the context of Central and Eastern Europe (cf. Junghaus 2014).

Recent years have seen a great acceleration in this respect in the field of art. Not only has an institution been set up to provide support and patronage for Roma art, but a Roma artist has also represented the Polish National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2022. The institution in question is the aforementioned European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC), a supranational European organisation based in Berlin. As a joint initiative of the Council of Europe, the Open Society Foundations and an initiative of Roma leaders (Alliance for a European Roma Institute of Arts and Culture), ERIAC is intended to educate and inform non-Roma about Roma art and culture, and to help foster understanding, tolerance and mutual respect between Roma and non-Roma communities. Above all, ERIAC aims to be a space for Roma artists and an institution that cares for Roma cultural heritage. The aim is to raise awareness among European institutions, policy makers and stakeholders about the role of Roma arts and culture, and to build broad partnerships across Europe (and beyond) in support of Roma communities.

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas’s art carries a powerful charge of demythologising and deconstructing the previous treatment of Roma culture and communities. It combines ancient history but also a contemporary message. In the 127-year history of the Venice Art Biennale, this is the first time that a representative of the Roma community has represented the national pavilion. The very title of the exhibition, “Re-enchanting the World”, made direct reference to the history of the Roma in Europe and Poland. History was not only reconstructed here, but reformulated, redefined and re-read.

“Re-enchanting the World” is the artist’s contemporary manifesto on Roma history, identity and art, drawing inspiration from Renaissance astrological frescoes from the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara. The Polish Pavilion in Venice was transformed into a ‘palace of paintings’, with an installation of twelve large-format fabrics, corresponding to the twelve months of the calendar. “We are talking about ourselves, not someone else who just sees us from the sidelines. This is the re-echanting of the world,” says Małgorzata Mirga-Tas in a video that prepares viewers for what the viewer will encounter at the exhibition (Zakrzewska, 2023). The title of Małgorzata Mirga-Tas’s exhibition, “Re-enchanting the World”, was inspired by and comes from Silvia Federici’s book “Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons” (2018). The artist, together with the curators of the exhibition (Joanna Warsza and Wojciech Szymański), performs a re-appropriation, proposing a re-enchantment of the world as a way of reclaiming proactivity and community, as well as reviving and rebuilding relationships with the ‘other’ in the broadest sense. The exhibition is based on the idea of transnationality, cyclicality and shows the interpenetration of mutual influences between Roma, Polish and European culture.

The exhibition is an ambitious attempt to expand the narrative and history of art to include representations of the culture of the Roma, Europe’s largest transnational minority and community. The exhibition consists of twelve large-format textiles, corresponding to the twelve months of the calendar. Each panel consists of three horizontal strips:

• The upper strip depicts the story of the mythical migration and arrival of Roma communities in Europe, based on a series of 17th-century prints by the Lorraine engraver Jacques Callot. These representations, full of anti-Roma stereotypes, are decolonised by the artist through their reinterpretation in a colourful setting. The large-scale collages she has created reveal the rich world of Roma past and mythology.
• The central strip is an affective archive of herstory, in which portraits of Roma women and men important to Małgorzata Mirga-Tas are intertwined with astrology. We find important figures from the world of politics, the arts, the Roma movement, but also members of Małgorzata’s family and friends. This non-violent emancipatory process, in which women from the past and contemporary icons play an important role, as well as everyday heroines, ordinary mothers, wives, aunts, workers or activists, changes and gives meaning to a new image of the Roma through the eyes of their representative.
• The lower strip illustrates everyday life in her hometown Czarna Góra and other Roma settlements in Podhale and Spisz, previously collected in photographic frames and transformed by Małgorzata into fabric. These fragments of the exhibition are particularly close to me, for me it is a kind of family album.

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas’s work responds to centuries of violence against the Roma in art, but also in science, where symbolic violence is particularly prominent. The Roma have been an object in art, a subject of study, but rarely an entity. The examples of the slavery of the Roma in what is now Romania or the Roma Holocaust clearly show that their predetermined negative image and perception placed them on the margins of societies, in the role of scapegoats. Stereotypes and prejudices perpetuated in art and science, and thus in popular knowledge, served to legitimise exclusionary, colonising and violent policies towards the Roma, which, as history has shown, resulted in extermination and genocide. Małgorzata’s work is about conscious resistance, active action, and changing the narrative through the means of expression that are closest to her. In Małgorzata Mirga-Tas’s works, the reappropriation of colonial images of Roma, produced by non-Roma, is a very literal gesture of becoming anew, of producing an image that is authentic, not processed by an external gaze. Here, too, the power and truly revolutionary potential of art is clearly visible, but this time in the creation of a different image of the Roma.

As I was writing this, a very special event took place, namely, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas was selected as the winner of the prestigious Tajsa Roma Cultural Heritage Prize 2023. The Tajsa Prize embodies the exceptional talent and creativity of Roma artists from around the world by honouring those who have distinguished themselves in various fields of art and culture. The Tajsa Prize 2023 ceremony took place at the esteemed Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin on 30 November 2023, where Małgorzata Mirga-Tas was recognised for her exceptional contribution to Roma cultural heritage, in recognition of her outstanding achievements in promoting Roma cultural expression and challenging social norms. Importantly, the award is funded entirely by the membership fees of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture in Berlin.³

Elżbieta Mirga-Wójtowicz

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Bibliography:

– Junghaus, Tímea (2015) Opposition is Not Enough. The Role of Roma Art in the contemporary constellation, in Romológia, III/8., Spring.

– Junghaus, Tímea (2014) Roma art: Theory and practice. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 59, no. 1. 25-42.

– Hasdeu, I. (2008). Imagining the Gypsy woman: Representations of Roma in Romanian museums. Third Text, 22(3), 347-357.

– Gheorghe, Nicolae (1997) The Social Construction of Romani Identity. In: Thomas Acton (ed.), Gypsy Politics and Traveller Identity. Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 157-158.

Worth reading:

– “Małgorzata Mirga-Tas. Re-enchanting the World” ed. W. Szymański, J. Warsza. National Gallery of Art, Archive Books, ERIAC, Warsaw and Berlin, 2022.

– Travelling Images. Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, ed. W. Szymański, N. Żak. Exhibition Catalogue, International Cultural Centre, Cracow 2022.

– European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture, ERIAC: http://eriac.org/

– Timea Junghaus (ed. 2006). Meet Your Neighbours – Contemporary Roma Art from Europe. Open Society Institute.

Video:

Re-enchanting. Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, directed by Anna Zakrzewska. Production: Kijora Film, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, 2022.