 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The Roma are not a homogeneous group. Assimilation, emancipation, migration, miscegenation, education and social status have diversified the populace to such an extent that today the Roma population is as diverse as the general European non-Roma population. Yet for all the diversity, a common cultural framework and a social history sustain the classification.
Romani communities are dispersed far and wide across Europe, creating discontinuous diasporas. Today, the Romani population in Europe is variously estimated at between eight and twelve million people.1 Precise demographic data are not available, due in large part to
“The reluctance of many Roma to identify themselves as such for official purposes, and the refusal of many governments to include Roma as a legitimate category for census purposes.”2
With the May 2004 enlargement of the European Union, approximately 1.5 million Roma became EU citizens. The accession of Romania and Bulgaria in 2007 means an additional 3 million EU citizens of Romani origin.
The Roma speak different dialects of Romani, as well as a variety of languages from their “host” countries. They share a number of religious and church affiliations, whilst maintaining at the same time cultural boundaries not only between themselves and the surrounding environment, but also between different Romani groups.
Roma politics lack even the most fundamental methodological tools necessary to define, organise and implement policy. Students of the Roma as a minority are divided over principal theoretical issues. Experts are hesitant in their choice between a standpoint advocating human rights and anti-discrimination, and approaches that promote “human development.”3 The assessment and critical analysis of the situation is further hindered by the conflict of the standpoint that prioritises the assertion of individual, human rights, and theories that rely on a unified group identity for the Roma.
To counter and overcome massive prejudice, hate and discrimination in Europe, policies and action plans are needed, which apply to the entire Roma community. In order to make these efficient by maximising social awareness and participation, they must be employed not on the level of the individual, but of the group(s), through the communication and representation of community identity. Thanks to the communication and information potential of images, the culture of the Roma has a far more important role in the contemporary politics of representation and the conveyance of a valid Roma identity than any other media.
As the distinguished Romologist Thomas Acton points out:
“Multiculturality might be an appropriate concept to describe the basic reality of Gypsy people.”
The Roma community is a transnational minority; their rights and identity are contingent upon not only the discretion of individual states, and thus the legitimacy of Roma identity is the competence not only of the particular nations. The Roma community knows no territorial boundaries, uniting people of different tongues and religions. Understood this way, Roma identity coincides with Stuart Hall’s cultural identity, which is a “matter of becoming,”4 or with Homi Bhabha’s description:
“restless, uneasy, interstitial hybridity: a radical heterogeneity, discontinuity, the permanent revolution of forms.”5
In creating Roma identity, the discourse of locality, of origin, is far more important than construing “nomadicity.” Such a definition of cultural identity became a cornerstone of post-colonial thought: imaginary contents emerged, a
“coherence in the experience of dispersal and fragmentation, which is the history of all enforced diasporas.”6
The history of Roma representation shows a strong resemblance to that of colonised peoples; thus, post-colonial theory is one of the obvious choices in analysing the works of Roma artists. It is not uncommon to employ post-colonial theory in a context that is not typically post-colonial; it is, in fact, a favoured method in critical cultural studies, when a different culture, historical or social phenomenon is to be understood. Ian Hancock, an acknowledged linguist of Romani origin, also emphasises this analogy:
“A similarity of life conditions (oppression, discrimination) may produce a similarity in the development of language and culture.”7
Since our approach is post-colonial and the present study can be con
sidered an ethnicist text, it is necessary to define or rewrite the concept of nation. The grounds on which this rewriting can take place is the idea of the nation as an allegory, because any other gesture within the territory of the possible critical interpretations would not so much rewrite the nation as power relations, but reproduce it. The nation must be present as an idea and not as an ideology (in the Benedetto Crocean sense), as an element of value and not as an evaluator. This way, the nation ceases to be a manipulation that contains and dominates everything, and becomes instead a circumscription that allows for the recognition of current truths: an opportunity for multiple meanings.
Cultural representations play an important role in the construction of the Roma identity. Until the second half of the 20th century, the representation of the Gypsy was the exclusive monopoly of non-Roma (gadhe) artists. This could be done by representing Romani music as “folk-music,” Romani verbal accounts as folklore and Romani-made images as “folk art” or “naïve art.” In other words, Romani productions were represented as being not the work of individual authors, but rather as collective facts of nature, which only become a concrete representation when in some way presented by the art collector or the folklorist. As a new generation of Roma intellectuals emerges, we are witnessing the birth of Roma consciousness,8 a state when successful, wealthy and well-educated Roma proudly acknowledge their origin, rather than opt for assimilation and the relinquishment of their cultural heritage. The latter is a real reason for concern, even now when there are only a few well-to-do Roma. As OSI Chairman George Soros put it,
“It is a very natural inclination to try not to be Roma, to meld into the general population, to assimilate. And therefore what is left, what the rest of the population sees, are the disenfranchised, the underclass. And that is the stereotype that prevails in society.” 9
These well-educated professionals are rewriting the history of Roma culture, representation and art. If we draw on Stuart Hall’s analysis of minority cultural politics, we might suggest that in order to deconstruct dominant cultural representations, Roma artists need to fight on two fronts. First, they need to reverse the stereotypes that prevail in the media, by producing images of the Roma that oppose those created in mainstream culture. Secondly, they need to fight for access to mainstream audiences. Otherwise, even the rare examples of truly authentic self-representations remain visible only within the narrow circles of academia or human rights festivals. If, as leading Romani scholar-politician Nicolae Gheorghe suggests,
“the representation of Romani identity is a process of ethno-genesis which involves the Roma self-consciously playing with their identities, then perhaps we must recognise that constructing effective representations involves the artist as much as the scientist or politician.”10
An event of historical importance marks the beginning of the Roma Cultural Movement in Europe, the 1979 First National Exhibition of Self-Taught Artists in Hungary, organised by Ágnes Daróczi and hosted by the Pataki Community Centre (Budapest).11 This exhibition raised international awareness, generated fans and supporters to Roma culture, and had a long-lasting propagating effect on the Central/Eastern European Roma cultural production. The third such display, in 2000, was still organised in the Museum of Ethnography (Budapest), rather than an institute of contemporary art, as if the exhibits were the exotic objects of an alien civilisation.
Serge Poliakoff, Otto Mueller, even Sandra Jayat, were welcomed to the artistic context they lived in, the avant-garde. In the second part of the twentieth century we finally find the odd creative Romani writer, artist or film director making self-representations, but when (after 1971) the Roma artists claimed recognition as a group, their works were still relegated to the status of collective (folk, popular) manifestations of Roma culture, of exotic Roma objects. If the artists were not reduced to anonymity, their fate was circumscribed by being presented, for over three decades, in marginal institutions which did not have the necessary infrastructure for creation and exhibition. In 1981, Sandra Jayat organised the first world exhibition of Roma artists in the Conciergerie of Paris.12 The exhibition was again an international success, which did not manage to break into the art scene, but its significance in keeping Europe’s Roma artists inspired and the creative production stimulated was outstanding. The initiators of these internationally acknowledged events were pioneers, but the time was not yet right. Between 1980 and 1990, “social inclusion” became an important pan-European agenda, with the consideration of the situation of the Roma population, and although it did not have a component of “cultural inclusion”, it prepared the ground for the second and more momentous wave of the Roma Cultural Movement.
“The Roma, as Europe’s largest ethnic minority, have not benefited from the dramatic transition, consolidation and expansion of democracy and democratic values in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989. The continued ostracism and segregation faced by the Roma registers as perhaps the most critical of democratic deficits within and beyond the European Union. Their predicament needs to be understood as the legacy of long-standing discrimination and exclusion compounded by extreme poverty. The challenge of closing the gap in living conditions between Roma and non-Roma, eliminating anti-Roma prejudices and ending social exclusion needs to be understood as a complex, multi-faceted, pan-European issue.”13
The establishment of the First Roma Pavilion at the 52nd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia – is the climax of the process that began in Central and Eastern Europe in the mid-1990’s, when the interpretation of the cultural practice of minorities was enabled by a paradigm shift, commonly referred to in specialist literature as the “cultural turn.”14 The idea of the cultural turn was introduced; and this was also the time when the notion of cultural democracy became crystallised in the debates carried on at various public forums. Civil society gained strength, and civil politics appeared, which is a prerequisite for cultural democracy. This shift of attitude in scholarly circles derived from concerns specific not only to ethnicity, but also to society, gender and class.15
This change brought about an interest in exploring the history and value of Roma culture. Not only has it become obvious that the arts are laden with stereotypes about the Roma, but also that the cultural classification describes the visual products of the Roma with terms the experts themselves claim to be positive, like naïve, barbarian, primitive, primordial, archetypal, autodidactic. Roma art was evaluated solely by non-Roma experts, who excluded it from the official canon on the grounds that it was outdated, merely illustrative or, at best, nostalgic. Roma artists rarely had the opportunity to experiment with new techniques, and they could exhibit only in community centres, venues which seem marginal from the perspective of the cultural discourse. When Roma intellectuals defined one of their chief missions as the exploration and presentation of Roma art, and the removal of stereotypes and prejudices from the image of the Roma, they only expected to face a scarcity of resources and very difficult circumstances under which to realise ideas; what they did not anticipate was that the international cultural scene and cultural policy would become sensitive towards, and interested in, the same cultural products, contents and problems they were examining, and that this context would be essentially appreciative and encouraging. During this second wave of the Cultural Movement, Roma artists have been successful participants of several international contemporary art events.16
However, for Roma artists, acknowledging their identity and cultural heritage is still a double-edged sword, despite the fact that the increasingly vigorous discourse on Roma identity and representation, together with the appearance of Roma cultural experts, has begun to dismantle this sophisticated machinery of cultural oppression.
Roma culture has generated such interesting new phenomena as the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno, a professionally installed museum space with multiple functions and a carefully elaborated strategy of presenting the history of Roma representation accurately and engagingly. Most of the museum’s staff are Roma,17 and it is a place where everyone in the populous Brno Roma community can spend their time constructively. The building is decorated by a large mural, painted by David Zeman and his team: The Roma Road is screaming for recognition with vigorous oranges, reds and blues.
Similarly momentous are those attempts which present Roma artists in the official spaces of contemporary culture. The 2004 exhibition Hidden Holocaust was the first in Hungary to open the gates of Műcsarnok/Kunsthalle Budapest, this bastion of contemporary art, to the Roma artists. This was in effect the first time that Roma artists (eleven in all) could exhibit in an official space of contemporary art, and could use the infrastructure of the institution to realise their works.18 A glimpse at the exhibits of the Second Site show, held in London in March 2006, will also convince us that the way we are invited and allowed to think about Roma visual art has changed irreversibly: the paradigm shift has occurred.
The new paradigm is the creation of mega-projects which find their way into the institutions of official culture. What is needed are cultural events whose concepts are consciously developed on the basis of scholarly research, careful preparation and a comprehensive strategy for the representation of Roma culture. The most important element in this paradigm shift is the use of the new space and the related infrastructure. Using a new, different infrastructure (theatres, concert halls and museums, together with their experts) has a positive effect on Roma cultural centres, which in time could boast quality promotion, more professional teams, and extensive experience in cultural management. Roma culture should infiltrate the official spaces, create professional solutions after conscious preparation and the reconsideration of its own representation, and rely on the expertise (in organisation and performance), participation and involvement of the majority societies.
The creation of the Roma minority’s own infrastructure – museums, theatres, concert halls etc. – remains on the agenda. There are countries where the need for the Roma’s own institutions has been an issue in social discourse for decades.19 Despite the many available proofs (institutions, exhibitions) of the advantages of acknowledging, or better yet, recognising, the culture of the Roma minority, of how it improves the image of the Roma in society and the self-esteem of Roma individuals, it is still debated whether there is any need for exclusively Roma institutions. Thus it is a question of whether there is a need for a Roma Pavilion. The answer may be another question: without creating an independent Roma Pavilion, how can we introduce Roma artists to the international art scene and the Roma community? The Roma Pavilion does not reinforce the segregation of the Roma (is not a “cultural ghetto”) when it represents Roma culture not as part of national cultures. Identity-based cooperation, as in the case of this Biennale, is needed not because we have a ghettoising or separatist agenda in the representation of Roma culture, but because Roma representation does not have a well-developed infrastructure we could rely on, and there has been extensive evidence that contemporary Roma art has not been able to find its niche of representation within the national structures. There is no other way Roma artists could have access to the infrastructure necessary for international appearance: exhibition spaces, a communication campaign, a contemporary arts institution that manages logistics.
Of course, in an ideal world Roma artists would be able to exhibit in any of the European pavilions, but it is a fact that no artist of Roma origin has been presented at the Venice Biennale throughout its 112-year.
It is an emphatic part of the curatorial concept that this display seeks to counter wild romantic stereotypes and misconceptions about Gypsy culture, fostering thereby a more self-assured Roma identity. It also wants to prove that Roma artists speak a visual language that is understandable all over the world, and that this language is in line with the “sophisticated, problem-conscious” approach of contemporary art. Though sensitivity to problems may be an attribute of contemporary art, it lost its interest in the kind of self-representation that relies on a homogenous identity some time ago.
The title of the exhibition, Paradise Lost, refers to the fact that the majority society should at last give up not only negative stereotypes about the Roma, but also the exotic “Gypsy romances.” The self-image that is to emerge at this display through the reinterpretation of Roma identity is not expected to be homogenous or stable. It is our belief that the identity of the Roma serves as a model for a modern, European transnational identity that is capable of cultural fusion and adaptation to changing circumstances. This is how the artists invited represent themselves, and this is how they experience their Gypsy identity. But while the goals of the Pavilion include the representation of this flexible identity, the individual artists have not been requested to deal with their own identity. Not every one of the artists in the Pavilion is of Roma origin. Nihad Nino Pusˇija, for instance, who lives in Berlin, has been documenting the life of a Gypsy family for two decades and had built strong links with this minority before learning (about two years ago) that he himself has Roma ancestors. The Finnish Kiba Lumberg’s video work ends with this sentence:
“I don’t recall being a Gypsy, but I have Gypsies in my dreams, and Gypsies surround me.”
This Roma heritage, the traces of it, the memories, experiences and traumas define the pieces, and the artists’ identity will never be irrelevant when interpreting their work. As Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe, the distinguished expert of mixed-race studies said:
“So many things have happened to me because of what I am, and they shape the way I am today…”20
These artists embrace and transform, deny and deconstruct, oppose and analyse, challenge and overwrite the existing stereotypes in a confident and intellectual manner, reinventing the Roma tradition and its elements as contemporary culture. The archetypical motives provide a firm underlying sentiment, but the result unexpectedly suggests a new interpretation, one that is created by the Roma artists themselves. The envisioned alternative identity highlights the strengths of the Roma, their capacity for fusion, sense of glamour, humour and irony, adaptability, mobility and transnationalism. The intention of opposing and denying the existing (mis)representations and promoting the contrary carry an irresolvable dichotomy, which becomes manifest in an art that is laden with sorrowful beauty, traces of paranoia, schizophrenia and post-traumatic syndromes.
The representations set models before the majority society, as well as the Roma, and represent the Roma as a group of civilised, successful individuals whose dignity is complete and worthy of acknowledgement.
Visual art has the palpable power to define and communicate particularised ideas, as well as collective cultural codes. Makers of art throughout history have exercised their immanent power to define themselves through art and to fashion a self-definition that reveals them and their respective societies in the best possible light. Roma artists have exercised the same right, but until recently they were condemned to anonymity and their voices have been hushed. If nothing else, this exhibition stands as evidence that their voices are now heard and will continue to resonate over time.
Notes
1 Bernard Rorke and Andre Wilkens (eds.), Roma Inclusion: Lessons Learned from OSI’s Roma Programming, Budapest: Open Society Institute, 2006
2 European Commission, The Situation of Roma in an Enlarged European Union, 2004,
3 The principal idea behind the concept of “human development” is enabling people to realise their talents through improving their opportunities and life quality.
4 Stewart Hall, Cultural Identity and Diaspora, Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, eds. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, Harlow: Longman, 1993,
p. 394
5 J. C. Robert Young, Colonial Desire, Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race, London, New York: Routledge, 1995, p. 25
7 Quoted in Nicolae Gheorghe and Thomas Acton, Citizens of the world and nowhere: Minority, ethnic and human rights, In: Roma during the Last Hurrah of the Nation-State, Between Past and Future, ed. Will Guy, Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2001, p. 59
8 I introduce the term after Gloria Anzaldúa, one of the greatest theoreticians of Chicano studies. In her writing, LA conciencia de la Mestica: Towards a new consciousness, she describes the state when instead of revolt, resistance and anger, the Chicano’s consciousness is characterised by pride and peace, evoked by the esteem and respect of the majority society.
10 Dragica Felja, Representation of Roma Culture in Contemporary Film, PhD Dissertation, 2004
See note 7
11 Ágnes Daróczi, The First National Exhibition of Autodidact Gipsy Artists, Budapest: National Centre of Adult Education, Budapest: MMI, 1979
12 Sandra Jayat: Première Mondiale D’art Tzigane, Paris, La Conciergerie May 6- May 30 1985.
14 The birth and the impact of the cultural revolution is outlined in the bibliography.
15 The shift was originally initiated in western societies by intellectuals outside academia, in a response to the civil rights and student movements, which generated social changes.
16 A few examples: János Balázs, monographic exhibition, Hungarian Institute, Paris; “We are what we are” – Aspects of Roma Life in Contemporary Art, Minoriten Galerie, Graz, Austria, 2004; the exhibition travelled to Slovakia, Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary (2006); Tibor Balogh, Teréz Orsós, International Sinti Festival, Hungarian Institute, Berlin, 2004; Hidden Holocaust, Műcsarnok/Kunsthalle Budapest, March 2004; North and South LAB, Culture and Colonisation, Tranzquartier, Vienna, March 2005; Strategies of (In)visibility, Camden Arts Centre, London, May 2005; Omara at the Rijeka Arts Biennial, Rijeka, Museum of Modern Art, November 2005; Second Site Exhibition, 2006
17 Including the director, Jana Horváthová, Ph.D
18 The Hidden Holocaust, Műcsarnok/Kunsthalle Budapest, March 2004
19 For example, the Hungarian Roma have been maintaining a discussion about the founding of a Museum for almost 25 years. The Roma minority of the Czech Republic and Romania have succeeded in their effort of building their own Roma Museums.
20 Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe: Let Blackness and Whiteness Wash Through: Competing Discourses On Bi-Racialisation and the Compulsion of Genealogical Erasures. Extract from Scattered Belongings: Cultural Paradoxes of ‘Race’, Nation and Gender, London, New York: Routledge, 1999, pp. 183-187.
A note on the terminology of the essay. Though there is widespread consensus that the politically correct term to be used instead of Gypsy is Roma, I use both in the text as synonyms of equal value, because “Roma” does not describe all groups of Gypsies (like the Sintis, Romunglo, Beas, Gitanes, Manus, etc.) as it is derived from the name of one group. Furthermore, I consider it far less important to use a politically correct term than to clean the word “Gypsy” of prejudices and negative stereotypes, and to rehabilitate it by employing it in positive contexts.
The poetic and multifaceted exhibition title ‘Paradise Lost’ heralds the first transnational European artists’ pavilion in the history of the Venice Biennale spanning the past 112 years. Naturally, there’s no pavilion available in the Giardini for a Pan-European exhibition of this nature. And so the Palazzo Pisani had to be leased for this exhibition featuring sixteen artists from eight European countries, curated by Tímea Junghaus. This state of affairs exists because the Biennale reflects the concept of national representations typical of the 19th century, an approach, which is completely outmoded in the modern world. The situation has been a continual source of complaint from art critics, although no major changes have been implemented. The problem is that artists from all over the world, curators and galleries are desperate to be present at the Biennale once in their lifetime.
Even if a Pan-European pavilion comes into being at some point in the near future – and I don’t really know if that’s actually desirable, if you think about the difficulties of putting together a suitable jury – there would certainly never be an exhibition there devoted exclusively to Roma artists. After all, it would be utterly inconceivable within the European Union, expanded to twenty-seven members, that one of the countries with the largest population of Gypsies should give even one artist from this community the privilege of exhibiting and representing their home country in Venice. This is not simply because it would entail acknowledging the Roma as full members of their society for the first time – not the case in any European country so far! We Europeans would also have to move away from our kitschy images of the Roma that became a fixed element in European mass culture at the latest when Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen was staged. Incidentally, this opera remains one of the most frequently staged operas in the international repertoire. The popular Romani image has since been perpetuated in many films (Francesco Rosi, Carlos Saura, etc.) and in advertising campaigns right up to the present day. What’s more, the image of “romantic Gypsies” represents an ideal of our own longings for freedom without being trammeled by possessions, and this image appears to be in fashion once again.
Author Colum McCann, based in New York, tells the heart-rending story of a female Roma poet in his successful novel Zoli. He draws on several historical sources (including the Polish poet Papusza) to create her character. Singing, drinking and brutality characterise the exceptionally successful novel by the adopted New Yorker, as Zoli travels endlessly in a caravan through Central Europe. On the other hand, famous Roma orchestras, such as Taraf de Haïdouk’s “Kocani” Orchestra, and the Mahala Rai Band, are continuously being remixed and sampled in Western European music studios. This is because Gypsy rock and electronic manele music are currently hits at the latest hot ‘Balkan parties’ in Berlin, London and Paris. By contrast, it’s difficult to find the heady mix of Balkan and Turkish manele music in ‘normal’ music shops in Belgrade, Budapest, Bucharest and Sofia. Because of its associations with Gypsy music, manele is frequently incorrectly designated as such, and Gypsy music is often boycotted by state radio broadcasters in these countries.
The Roma people have frequently been valued protagonists in European romantic productions, and this is also the case in neo-romantic remakes today. But generally, other people benefit financially from these ventures: producers and directors, such as the Bosnian Serb Emir Kusturica (Time of the Gypsies), who stated in an interview that he sought the roots of his creative work in the culture of the Roma. He went on to say that this was why in his flight from the inhuman society inherent in the modern world he had retreated to the realm of the Gypsies, where he professed to have found humanity and loyalty.
Roma identities have frequently been borrowed by third parties, and this continues to be the case. They are used as tools for criticising civilisation without ever having done anything to redress the political disenfranchisement of the Roma people. The opposite has in fact been the rule. The flip side of the romanticisation of the Roma as exotic ‘Racy’ outsiders was presented by the Nazis when they demonised the Gypsies as a “non-European foreign race” and 500,000 Gypsies became the victims of this policy. Even today, members of the Roma people are viewed primarily in terms of their ethnic affiliation rather than as individuals. For example, it is often assumed that contemporary Roma artists should conform to prevalent clichés about “Gypsy art.” They are identified with their heritage and effectively excluded from the arena of contemporary art. It is therefore long overdue for the Roma to be given the opporunity to speak for themselves with their work rather than having their culture mediated through others.
However, our Foundations should be wary of presenting them primarily as representatives of a political or ethnic collective since this would automatically subvert their artistic individuality and transform the Roma pavilion into an NGO office or a section of an Ethnographic Museum. As a result, hardly any of them would be taken seriously as artists.
In the same way that African artists are not representatives of their continent’s plight, nor are contemporary German artists representatives of Nazi crimes, Roma artists do not represent the so-called “others” of European history and its pretended pure origins. The Roma express Europe’s cultural diversity and its multiple origins through their customs and daily lives. In the same way that a Roma artist today deserves the same attention as other contemporary artists, the Roma people cannot be considered any longer to be a backward community living solely by their traditions, but as citizens with equal rights rooted in our common presence.
The Roma Pavilion, the first transnational pavilion in the Biennial’s history, is a genuine European pavilion highlighting the artificiality of national borders and the fiction of “otherness” in Europe today. As far as artists are concerned who are not (yet) part of the international art market and who are being ignored by museums and collections, the exhibition represents an intermediate stage for these artists until their artistic works receive fully individual recognition. The basic features of this exhibition by curator Tímea Junghaus recall the initiative by Salah Hassan and Okwui Enwezor when they asked for the creation of a pavilion for African artists at the Venice Biennale. However, the concept developed by Tímea Junghaus moves the debate further forward because it does not simply seek new forms of representation for Europe’s largest minority. Their message at the Venice Biennial is a positive one: the artists who have been selected express the much quoted cultural diversity of Europe within their original culture. This culture stretches right across Europe and never needed national borders in order to define its cultural identity
This exhibition is an act of affirmation, not one of defence.
For some four centuries, Romani/Gypsy/Traveller communities lived in the aftermath of a social disaster. Although the details vary enormously from country to country, their image in Europe, and taken by Europeans to their colonies, has been one of problems. Consequently, any analysis of their situation by Europeans tended to be in the context of finding a solution, right up until Hitler tried the final solution – which failed as all the others had done. They failed, of course, because these communities had strategies of self-defence and survival, of accommodating to, rather than challenging, racism and ethnic cleansing. Some accepted slavery; others, more fortunate, became taxable collectives of traders; others, survivors of genocide, became marginal commercial nomads, especially in north-western Europe. Whatever public performance they put on, they had to play along with non-Gypsy stereotyped images that suggested they had somehow deserved the genocides and enslavements of the 16th century. Only after Hitler, only after the discrediting of racism, could the Roma challenge the self-serving silences of European historiography, and Romani nationalism emerge.
In a way, however, Romani nationalism was another kind of defensiveness. Built into its ideology is acceptance that nations are entities entitled to a selfish defence of their own interests – the very ideology that led to the Romani calamity in the first place, and seems to make prejudice against Gypsies/Travellers seem natural. Roma/Gypsies/Travellers who became educated were faced with a terrible dilemma. Either they could keep their ethnicity to themselves and “pass” to get on in life. Or they could become the new progressive miracle, the literate, educated Gypsy, the token ethnic minority member, the professional Traveller community worker helping the educational and planning agents of the state, who, however anti-racist they may be, are still trying to solve the Gypsy problem.
I do not mean to question either the goodwill or the courage or the necessity of the Romani movement. I have been involved in it myself since 1967, and we have made some progress. Visual art had a place in it. One of the heroines of the struggle, Ági Daróczi, used her position in the Hungarian Ministry of Culture under Communism to encourage dozens of Romani artists.2 But their exhibitions were labelled naïve art. Progress came at a price. This marginal minority struggle made those in it, whether they are Roma/Gypsy/Travellers themselves, or non-Gypsy friends, become marginalised, obsessive and, in the older generation, even paranoid – in a word, defensive, still.
Daniel, Delaine and Damian belong to the first generation that has transcended this dilemma. They are not professional Gypsies; they are not Gypsy artists any more than David Essex is a Gypsy singer. They are definitely not naïve. They are artists who happen to be of Roma/Gypsy/Traveller origin. They are not part of any Gypsy problem. If you have a problem with their origins, that’s your problem, not theirs.
This does not mean, of course, that they don’t still have to face prejudice and misunderstanding. When The Sun tried to start an anti-Gypsy pogrom with its infamous “Stamp on the Camps!” headline, Delaine’s own parents suffered vicious anti-Gypsy graffiti daubed on the fences of their (long-established, perfectly legal) site. But normal people will realise that it is not Delaine’s parents, but The Sun’s racism which is the problem.
“Ah, but!”, exclaims the romantic ignoramus, the one who has read no serious Romani history but thinks he knows some hidden wisdom of the ages about racial purity, “are they really true Gypsies? You use this politically correct inclusive term ‘Roma/Gypsies/Travellers’ but what are they really? Are they Romanies or just Travellers?”
To deconstruct this question we have to look again at the disaster which befell the Roma about 200 years after they arrived in Europe. When the mixture of Muslim, Orthodox and Catholic feudal empires gave way to the fiercely nationalist states of the 16th century, the Roma found themselves, along with Jews and Africans, the victims of enslavement, ethnic cleansing and genocide. As capitalism replaced famine with unemployment, both migration and commercial nomadism became demonised as vagrancy. Within national boundaries, Romani traders often dominated commercial nomadic groups, even though the majority of Roma remained sedentary. A mosaic of groups was left behind when the tide of persecution receded a little, some still very Indian, some localised and acculturated, and some like Irish Travellers and Dutch Woonwagenbewoners starting their account of their own identity by asserting that whatever else they are, they are not Gypsies.
All of the groups, and all of the individuals in them or straddling their boundaries, are what they are, with their own history and culture, and no one does them any favours by asking whether they are really something else, whether the racial essence of Bohemia, or the wild deviant of non-Gypsy fears. Looking at those real histories and cultures means that we are no longer imprisoned by them, but can celebrate them as our starting point for the future.
This exhibition is an act of affirmation, not one of defence.
Each of these artists looks to the future. As I have laboured in the long, slow struggle of Romani Studies to replace the Gypsy problem, coming across their work has been like a glimpse of life beyond that grind, a holiday from the constant duty to explain. Their styles are utterly different, but each expresses vital components of what it means to be Romani in the 21st century. I dreamt of seeing their work together in one place.
Damian's extraordinary stream-of-consciousness concrete poems embodied in images evoked Gypsy history and everyday experience, and spoke to me so personally as someone trying to make sense of Romani history that sometimes I wondered if anyone else could understand them as I did. But when I spoke to other people, I realised they did. I learnt the salutary lesson that an artist can put together in one image what a professor strives to say in a hundred lectures, and still cannot quite encompass.
Delaine's work both embodies the assertive spirit of all the Roma/Gypsy/Traveller children's art I have ever seen, combined with the hard-won self-reliance of maturity. I once heard a Gypsy preacher in his sermon say “Before I was converted, I lived what I thought was an honourable life – I earned good money and Iiked nice things around me, good cups and saucers and pieces – well I still like nice things around me – God doesn't take those away from you...”. Delaine's creations, the soft figures and images, incarnate the spirit of those nice things. They are not the statuettes and Crown Derby themselves, but they are a commentary, both ironic and loving, on the Gypsy determination to create an environment with style. And also a warning about the threats to that environment from intolerance and ignorance.
In contrast to the intertwined lushness of Delaine and Damian, some of Daniel’s earlier abstract works examined questions of identity and difference through the vehicle of process painting, exploring boundary formation as a means of protection and segregation. The non-figuration of these earlier works was partly a response to the absence of the human figure in traditional Gypsy decoration with painted scrollwork and motifs in contrasting colours set apart by strong outlining. Daniel saw this use of strong outlining as an attempt to maintain a clear boundary definition between diverse elements while at the same time seeking compositional harmony – a concern echoed in Romani people’s desire to preserve their cultural identity from the perceived threat of assimilation. The works on display here, however, have moved on, from his concentration on the boundaries to a far less austere exploration of the imagined space within them, which, like the sites actually occupied by Gypsies, is marginal, and constantly under threat from ever more restrictive laws which undermine their own formal commitment to progress and equality. Because we find both parts of the contradictory myth in this space, the romance and the deviance, the possibility is finally offered of transcending it.
All three artists have to refer to the visual vocabulary with which world culture has represented Gypsies, and so cannot escape the legacy of the past because they have to use it to enable their wider audience to know what they are talking about. Lemon3 has shown brilliantly how this worked for music, theatre and film for the Roma in Russia before, during and after the Soviet era. But among the arts, visual art has always been the avant-garde to take the past on board and then move on. This exhibition4 is staged as a curtain-raiser for the London International Romani Film Festival, with its mixed bag of bold experiment, historic stereotype and worthy documentary. For better or worse, those films show the concepts with which we think about the place of Roma/Gypsies/Travellers in the world, the challenging of stereotypes which is the first site of resistance. These three artists have reached a second site, where they transcend the stereotypes, affirm the value of their experience, and represent the future.
Notes
1 Second Site – Daniel Baker, Ferdinand Koci, Damien Le Bas, Delaine Le Bas – An Exhibition by four artists from Roma/Gypsy/Traveller communities. Compiled and edited by Thomas Acton and Grace Acton, London: University of Greenwich, 2006
2 Ágnes Daróczi and István Kerékgyártó (eds.), The Second National Exhibition of Autodidact Gipsy Artists, Budapest: Hungarian Cultural Institute, 1989. Not until 2000 was she able to catalogue The Third National Exhibition of Roma Artists, Budapest: Hungarian Cultural Institute. The change of name and publisher marks more progress.
3 Alaina Lemon, Between Two Fires: Gypsy Performance and Romani Memory from Pushkin to Postsocialism, Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2000. For further contextualising discussion of Romani aesthetics see Thomas Acton, Modernity, Culture and Gypsies, In N. Saul and S. Tebbutt (eds.), The Role of the Romanies: Images and Counter-Images of ‘Gypsies’/Romanies in European Cultures, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004
4 Second Site, Stephen Lawrence Gallery, University of Greenwich, 20th February - 3rd March 2006
“Marking out is never an innocent act.” (Maria Todorova)
This dictum also applies in our case, the Roma Pavilion in Venice. Are we creating an ethnicising, socially motivated ‘special case’, sponsored by philanthropy, in the hybrid environment of the art establishment?
No doubt, there are multiple risks:
• That this endeavour will be perceived as patronising (by the Roma community, as well as the artistic and critical communities)
• That it will be sidelined by the art world as a merely well-intentioned, extraterritorial exercise
• That it will be accused of being a symbolic act that has no impact on “reality”, the reality of Roma, Sinti, and … (it starts with the name…), living in Europe in often still desperate conditions.
Of course, we have good arguments in favour of the project.
• We are breaking the established pattern of national pavilions with a transnational exhibition.
(However, transnationalism is, as yet, a “minority programme” in the political reality, a cosmopolitan paradigm which makes little impact on contemporary ideologies of “identity”, despite trends in the wider socio-economic environment. Will the art world, the art markets value the paradox?)
• OSI has diligently and courageously collected wide-ranging examples of “Roma” art.
(However, so far this has been done in relative isolation, not yet accompanied by critical discourse, and the examples have been largely “pictorial”: such an “intuitive” approach may well be subjected to harsh, or encouraging, scrutiny in Venice.)
• The “representational” mode of this exhibition will be complemented by a series of side events which,
along with the opening event, may become equally important “main events”; let us raise expectations that the whole approach can be redirected into mainstream (ultimately political) debate about the Roma in Europe!
(However, these plans must transcend the “innocence” of the creative basis of the enterprise. On the other hand, one may decide – knowing too much about the world of politics – to abstain from these “sophistications” and remain “naïve”, in a deliberate choice for the autonomy of the arts.
Such considerations are perhaps too self-critical, but they do have consequences for the project’s
presentation and “use.”
• The Pavilion represents a kind of “third space” (to use Homi Bhabha’s term), a transnational attempt to sail between memories, spaces and identities. It is neither innocently transnational (the social conditions experienced by the Roma do not allow for idealism) nor innocently extraterritorial in the art world. Hopefully, the curator will exploit and the visitors will appreciate these paradigms in such a way as to frustrate simplistic expectations.
• The Pavilion “represents” and questions intra-European decolonisation of minds. The post-colonial theory of Edward Said applies here as well, both in rejecting “exoticism”, “intra-European Orientalism”, as well as decoding discourses of alleged superiority and exclusion.
• This decolonising approach entails recognition of the fact that we are living in an age marked more
by “synchrony” than “progress.” Art’s power lies in this simultaneity of phenomena, rather than the standards – subject to fashion – of marketability or so-called progress. Reference to the material conditions of transit, homelessness, exposure, etc., can help to locate memories and their oppressiveness.
• The pavilion contradicts high-cultural notions of art imagery and values. The question it raises, in essence, is “What do pictures want?” (as W.J.T. Mitchell titled one of his books). Perhaps, contravening the monopoly of letters, they are demanding that the unwritten “sub-history” be told. The pavilion sets a new benchmark
in the “economy of attention” and asks for a new mode of comprehending – and changing – the world
(and the world of the Roma).
What does that mean for the future proceedings?
• Reflection must be present from the first. This means investing in the opening event – OSI has chosen good speakers, combining sponsors, artists, politicians and theoreticians – as well as in a few major side events
(with partners such as the European Cultural Foundation) in order to achieve some consistency.
• Make the exception the rule: ensure that the exhibition, and the spirit and reflection behind it, travel – not only to New York, but also (and foremost) to European “destinations of destiny”, cities at the EU’s “internal” cultural borders of exclusion and potential inclusion. (Future European Capitals of Culture, such as Stavanger 2008, Linz 2009, Essen, Pécs and Istanbul 2010 may well be catalysts of change in perception.)
• For maximum impact, engagement with the political sphere must be achieved, both at the public level
(EU Commission, Council of Europe, Ministers of Culture) and the private level (foundations, corporate partners).
The exceptional Pavilion proves to be extremely inspiring. Can we share this inspiration?
The storage facility of the largest European
Roma Art Collection (Budapest, 4th district)
Cover page of the exhibition catalogue
Second Site, 2006
David Zeman: The Roma Road
Facade mural of the Museum of
Romani Culture, Brno
Delaine and Damian Le Bas,
Daniel Baker | photo: Karl Grady
Group photo, Venice workshop,
2007 | photo: Nihad Nino Pusija
