LUCERNE.- Małgorzata Mirga-Tas (*1978) was the first ever Roma to represent a country at the Venice Biennale. In 2022, her expansive textile images entitled Re-Enchanting the World in the Polish pavilion captivated the public. The exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Luzern extends over four rooms and focuses on the aspect of community. In addition to the textile images, the work groups with paravents and Herstories are presented. Her film Noncia is being shown for the first time in the context of an exhibition.
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Małgorzata Mirga-Tas collects fabrics from among her family members and friends in order to tell viewers, from a feminist viewpoint, about the everyday life of the Roma, and also about their rather stigmatising, stereotypical, and often racist depiction throughout the history of European art. Together with women from her community, the artist creates highly expressive images out of tablecloths, curtains, bed linen and items of clothing . These images tell us about heroines and mystical figures, but also about the suppression, persecution and marginalisation of the Roma. By showing protagonists who have been overlooked for so long, Małgorzata Mirga- Tas provides an alternative to the established historiography. Her Herstories make up an archive of Roma women who have freed themselves from patriarchal structures and now forcefully occupy space – within the Roma community and in the exhibition. In her work Re-Enchanting the World, the artist deconstructs stereotypical depictions, strengthens her own community and reveals a diversity of voices. Inspired by the frescoes in Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara, Italy, she has developed her own pictorial cycle: instead of heavenly and earthly scenes from the ancient pictorial programme, she presents her Roma community, which in Europe accounts for more than ten million people.
Mirga-Tas’s oeuvre challenges to us to read images critically: What is depicted, by whom and with what intention? Ultimately, the artist addresses the theme of access to the public sphere, so important today for democratic coexistence. Which histories are being told anyway? In brief: «Who speaks?»
Małgorzata Mirga-Tas is a Polish Romni, who, as an artist, pedagogue and activist, campaigns for the visibility of her community. She lives and works in Czarna Góra, a village in the voivodeship, or province, of Lesser Poland. Since its presentation at the 59th Venice Biennale her work has gained wider recognition and she has been awarded the Polish cultural prize Paszporty Polityki and the Tajsa Roma Cultural Heritage Prize.
Curated by Fanni Fetzer
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