Strategies used by female Roma artists oppose social racism and sexism with the aim of questioning them. Given the multilayered nature of identities arising from historical and social relations, we encounter the notion of intersectional discrimination in which these identities overlap and are inseparable from each other. Thus, women artists often play with the notions of gender in combination with class and ethnicity, emphasizing that they are not as they have been shown for centuries on paintings, through a film projector, on theater boards and in literature.
Despite the differences between African-American and Roma communities, in the nature of civil society engagement, their history, mobilization, and political organization, certain similarities are found in which capitalism perpetuated feudal relations by placing them in a subordinate position. Margareta Matache, a Harvard lecturer and Roma activist, also dealing with this topic, points out that Roma and African-Americans have crossed similar paths since the beginning of their history, as well as sharing a common struggle. That art often and inevitably outlines the social picture, contexts and events, is evident in the portrayal of minority groups, which throughout the history of art are rarely presented realistically and with empathy. An extensive research project of the representation and participation of the Black in art history has spawned ten books in five volumes entitled The Image of The Black in Western Art.
The project began in the 1960s in response to segregation in the United States of America, and it should be recalled that only circa ten years later the first World Roma Congress was held in London, when the Roma community, united and empowered, began to define its own policy on the international stage. In this process, the important task of identifying and analyzing the representation of the Roma community throughout the history of art is certainly emphasized.
In the last few years, especially with the increase in the use of information and communication technologies and with the expansion of digital possibilities, there has been an increase in platforms, spaces and exhibitions created to promote art and culture, but also to present artists and cultural workers. RomArchive, the Roma digital archive, makes Roma art and culture visible, by illustrating their contribution to European cultural history. Through stories told by the Roma themselves, those about art, politics, history and suffering, RomArchive creates a reliable source of knowledge available on the Internet, countering stereotypes and prejudices with facts. On the other hand, the Romani Herstory platform offers space for the achievements of women of Roma origin, showing the stratification of their identities and actions, all with the purpose of providing counter-narratives to those focused on the male experience of Roma life and culture, resulting in disinterest in women’s issues. I think that most people are used to see Romani women as the objects of representation but rarely as active cultural producers. Unfortunately, it remains extremely hard for Romani women to enter the cultural industries. Often excluded from traditional means of production and distribution, most of them have worked within the independent sector which has, at times, exacerbated their invisibilities. But it doesn’t mean that Romani women haven’t left an important cultural legacy behind them, states Émilie Herbert-Pontonnier, the initiator of the above-mentioned platform. Here it is certainly worth mentioning the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC), a unique organization that opens space for the presentation of artistic achievements, exchange of creative ideas and development of mutual respect through the dissemination of knowledge and a positive image of the Roma. Apart from Berlin, ERIAC recently opened its premises in Belgrade as well. Likewise, the digital project of contemporary art RomaMoma, an initiative of ERIAC and OFF-Biennale Budapest, was launched. RomaMoma acts as a forum for joint reflection on the future Roma Museum of Contemporary Art, a place for the inclusion of local and international, Roma and non-Roma artists, cultural experts, social scientists and civil society.
Self-presentation
ERIAC also considers itself as a feminist institute, so it has organized several events related to Roma feminism. Thus, a noteworthy exhibition entitled Romani Women Weaving Europe, was organized in 2019, valuable within the discourse of feminist and artistic thought and dialogue. The exhibition presents the works of female artists (and of one male artist) from Poland, Romania, Finland, Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Great Britain who provided a counter-narrative to those who misrepresent Romani women, usually as victims of their own culture, backward and promiscuous, created (and articulated) by the non-Roma community – from the scientific and media, to the cultural-artistic one.
Anna Mirga-Kruselnicka, Deputy Director of ERIAC, pointed out at the opening of the exhibition that Roma women tend to see themselves much differently from what the majority society seeks to portray them. The image of a “Gypsy woman” has been shaped by the majority society for centuries. Through literature, in visual arts, and later on through policies, research and the media – the representation of the Roma women oscillated somewhere between the romanticized and hyper-sexualized image of “Carmen” to the image of a Gypsy witch, beggar, thief. These representations treated Roma women as both promiscuous and free and at the same time trapped by their own traditional culture, she says and adds: For those of us who are Roma, or those who have had a chance of witnessing the intimacy of Roma community life – we know that the reality is much different. Roma women are the fundament of Roma communities. Their role and influence are unquestionable. As transmitter of culture they are also its re-inventors. In this sense, the very survival of the Roma culture depends on Roma women.
Both the Roma community, as well as the majority community, Mirga-Kruselnicka continues, are organized around gender, and Roma women face multiple discrimination, as women, and also as members of a stigmatized ethnic minority, at greater risk of social exclusion and poverty. It was precisely this state of affairs that compelled them to provoke patriarchal and racial repression, also through art, and as in the case of other coloured women, the dailystruggle of Roma women became the basis for the gradual emergence of Roma feminism as an anti-injustice movement. This important role is played by Roma artists who strongly articulate the perspectives of contemporary Roma feminism and through their works embody strategies of racial and gender injustices that are materialized, embodied and presented through art. Likewise, in this way, they question the patriarchal structures present in their communities and question traditional gender roles, she explains, adding: In this sense, Roma women become rebels and revolutionaries, fearlessly challenging different forms of oppression. Their resistance is born from a deep sense of humanity and opposition to all manifestations of social and cultural injustice.
Self-realization
As a response to all of the above-mentioned, art is used as a place of resistance, a space where hegemonic narratives can be challenged, and female artists consequently play with stereotypes to refute it. Exactly this method is used by the artist Emília Rigová from Slovakia, who emphasizes the irony of collaborating with a certain stereotype in order to determine which parts of it should really be contested. Hence, she is aware that she may be recreating the stereotype anew, but that it is necessary to change it. The change that comes from within, from the Roma community, is also important for the artist Delaine Le Bas from Great Britain, who states the importance of changing perceptions at all levels, because stereotypes instilled in society have made everyone thinks they know who we are more than we do ourselves. Le Bas participated as an artist and co-curator of both editions of the Roma Biennale, an authentic festival dedicated to art and culture, based on the vision of her husband – Damian Le Bas, who wanted to create a fluid festival, adaptable to time and place. This proved to be especially important in this year’s edition of the Biennale, when artists (male and female) were able to exhibit their works via a digital platform as well, making them accessible to everyone. Exhibitions of Roma culture are also held at the Venice Biennale, depicting the efforts of the Roma community to present its art on the international stage. The first Roma exhibition was set up in 2007 as a part of the 52nd Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art, entitled Paradise Lost, curated by Timea Junghaus. It included works by male and female Roma artists presenting a transnational, contemporary and current vision to reflect on the experience of the Roma. At the exhibitions that followed, many female artists had the opportunity to display their works. Next year, at the 59th Venice Biennale, Poland will be represented by artist Małgorzata Mirga-Tas. She also presented the work of Herstories at this year’s Autostrada Biennale in Kosovo, together with the local Roma community, sharing women’s memories by means of their personal belongings.
Despite the negative images that remain, contemporary art platforms, including the Biennale, can further encourage the display of Roma community experience and the values of Roma culture, as well as they can offer artists a path to professional development. Such events lead to resolving the permanent absence of works by Roma artists in museum programs and art collections, and for the purpose of questioning cultural creative industries that are often guided by the principles of social and class exclusivity.
The Roma art movement is diverse as it brings together artists from all over Europe and the world who deal with a wide range of topics and use a variety of tools to achieve their goals. Sometimes the artworks and the politics cross over and often the artists – just by their mere presence within different spheres of the world – can create new dialogues about what perception is and this, in turn, adds to a momentum towards social justice and new ways of seeing who we are. But it really means that everyone has to work at what they do best in their individual areas in order to create a collective impact. Collaboration not only with each other but also with others is also important in order to push forward1, Le Bas points out. It is just the immediacy of contemporary art platforms, events and initiatives that offers an opportunity for the Roma community to engage in a part of the public debate, offering a safer space to explore social, cultural and other issues, taking the lead at the table when discussing one’s own image in public. That art achieves a lot and reaches far, sets forth Ildiko Nova, a Hungarian-born artist with an address in Canada, who sees art as a bridge to a calmer, but also more interesting, instant dialogue, with the reach of a wide audience in the hope that such a cathartic experience truly leads to more positive responses. In her work Roma Storyteller, she expresses: I am not welcome to coexist, I am forced to segregation, and then my settlement is destroyed, I am subject to illegal evictions, my culture is appropriated for fashion novelty, my child’s schooling is restricted. Am I dangerous or is the truth uncomfortable? Encouraged by her own experience, she is aware of the necessary consistency and the strength required to be present as a woman in the cultural creation, and in the artistic world, too, as well as that the system of support for women should be based upon relations of knowledge and experience exchange.
The state of women’s work in culture is visible not only through gender pay gaps but also in an equally significant gap when it comes to gender representation. The UNESCO Global Report, entitled Re|Shaping Cultural Policies 2018, cites unequal pay between men and women in the arts and cultural sectors, as well as a lack of visibility and voice that tends to perpetuate multiple gender discrimination. Just as the Report itself emphasizes, the diversity of cultural expressions will remain elusive if women are not able to participate in all areas of cultural life, as creators and producers, and as citizens and consumers, as well.
Society is like that, unequal. Even if this changes a little, the art world is a reflection of society. It is not easy to be a Gypsy woman and an artist. It’s a daily struggle against contempt on all fronts. I think there is also a certain contempt for artists in general, male and female. In my career, I had the chance to present my artistic work in places of associative arts, which were places committed to exchange and diversity, Marina Rosselle, who comes from France, also referred to that fact. The exotic charm of a Romani woman is overemphasized, she continues, and although it is difficult to determine how artists have viewed their models throughout history, painting seems to be dominated by a moral message in which a Romani woman is the opposite of an honest woman. That narrative, already deeply rooted in art and society, has prompted female artists to play with symbols, messages and ultimately with their bodies, and all with the aim of demystifying it.
For many female Roma artists, the body is certainly an important issue, pointed out Luna De Rosa from the Roma Biennale’s organisational team, and many of them work in the field of performance and connect the body with the social context that governs and defines it. Topics such as those on issues of identity, race, gender, sexuality, and the continuing violence and exclusion against those perceived as “the other” in society are very important, for example in the works of Delaine Le Bas, as well as Valérie Leray’s photographs, focuses on two areas of exploration, portraits (identity), and places (memory).
Self-determination
The exhibition Roma Stories within the project of the Museum of Personal Stories, which talks about traditional values and customs, but also about the burden of tradition and gender inequality, also deals with double discrimination. Thus, Roma men and women, settled in the area of Slavonia and Baranja, told their own personal history of important life moments and exhibited it digitally and in space in 2019. Among the many stories were those about Snježana, one of the many illiterate Romani women who, by the force of her own will, started learning to write not until her late twenties, Vedrana, the first Romani woman to represent her hairdresser high school in an inter-county competition, or the one about Jovana, whose dance helps her cope with the double discrimination she is exposed to as a young, unmarried Roma woman. As a part of the Festival of Tolerance and on the eve of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a year earlier, an exhibition, Requiem for Auschwitz by the artist Ceija Stojka, whose works were borrowed from the Kai Dikhas Gallery in Berlin, was presented in Zagreb. Through her painting, Stojka released the traumatic memory of the time spent in concentration camps. In Croatia, it is worth mentioning Talita Jašarevski, who painted and sculpted mostly throughout her high school education at the School of Applied Arts and Design in Zagreb, and Merjem Bajrami from Pula, specializes in the art of Islamic calligraphy.
The ISTE collective, under which a group of women of different minority identities operates, gathered at the invitation of artist Andreja Kulunčić, conceived a public campaign in 2017 in which they speak in the first person about the problems they face on a daily basis and on institutional level. I want people to see me as any other person, not just a Roma, stands on a poster depicting a Roma woman holding a child in her arms.
Identities deviating from the norm, in this case those of Roma women (but also Muslim women, black women, asylum seekers), are becoming the object of intolerance and the target of violence that will change its form depending on the identity designation of the endangered body, they quote, adding that they, women of the ISTE collective since they are women over forty years of age, and moreover, minority identities, they break the otherness at least twice, inscribing their body in public space, saying that they do not want to accept the tyranny of the statistical construct and that they want to live in the city, which they consider their own, without fear and humiliation.
Using her body, revealing and neutralizing the contradiction of identity, Selma Selman, an artist from Bosnia and Herzegovina, in her work Superposition, which she exhibited this year in Zagreb, shows that as a woman, a Roma woman and an immigrant, she can become whatever the circumstances require of her. In her cycle of drawings, Selman also opposes the possible manifestations of so-called ‘superpositional intersectionalism’. My drawings expose and neutralize perceived conceptual oppositions and contradictions – allowing audiences to see the fluidity and possibility built -in to all relations, spaces and times. My drawings visualize different ways of reorganizing identities, bodies and cultures, reveals Selman.
Thanks to the female eye, for the first time we get a fresh perspective at the women’s world, but also a critical re-examination of the potential of women’s cultural work and association. Female artists do not refuse to participate in the wider Roma movement, on the contrary, they are a part of it, and by means of art they deny the patriarchy and discrimination which they also experience within their own community. They challenge visitors and spectators in their preconcieved image of the Roma community, refute stereotypes using their own experience, passionately and vigorously unveiling the perspectives of contemporary Roma feminism.
However, there is often a discourse about Roma women artists, as well as the one about women artists in general, where the ethnic and/or gender component is necessarily related to their (artistic) work. Through her scientific and artistic work, the artist Barbara Bódi, from Hungary, during our conversation mentioned that the majority of the population, currently, can not distinguish a more nuanced and detailed presence of creative trends in the work of female artists of Roma origin, and therefore cannot even make an actual attempt at its realistic interpretation and inclusion. Their knowledge covers the characteristics of the Gypsy/Roma fine art in the authentic sense, based on the original traditions, and focuses on highlighting the Roma origin as naive or “subaltern”, which are underestimated in a pejorative way. As the artist’s origins become apparent, ethnicity overrides the true quality and message of the work. From this moment on, the artist is deemed a Romani painter and is classified as a Romani artist. In such a manner, their works are observed through an ethnic perspective, Bódi concludes, even in the cases of graduated professional artists.
Furthermore, Rigová states that although she is wary of shallow labels such as the Roma theme or Roma matter, she uses the same to consistently create a new narrative relating to the representation of the Roma body throughout the history of art. Hence, art acts as an act of resistance, awakening and redefining one’s own spaces, extremely productive and questioning. On that trail, Le Bas reveals: I always say I am artist, my work is multi-layered, and is made up of all the facets of who I am, what I have and continue to experience, and how I feel in this world. This often touches on so many things it is difficult to distill it down to just a few components.
It is the personal choice of each artist, male or female, whether he or she wants to deal with anti-Romaism in their work, as De Rosa ultimately points out. Although many artists have agreed to work in this way, creating works that they present to a wider audience, and for the purpose of redefining the visual perception of the Roma minority, but also the politics of viewing, we hope that the time will come when female artists will be able to be nothing else but-female artists. The way they want it themselves.
The publication of this text was supported by the Electronic Media Agency as part of the program to encourage journalistic excellence
