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Daniel Baker: We are
never seen for what we are
Daniel Baker, one of the
artists whose work is exhibited at Paradise Lost-The First Roma Pavilion at the
Venice Biennale, talks about Roma identity, difficulties the Roma experience in
his native Great Britain, and his art work that represents the “Imaginary
Places, created by society for the Gypsies”
By Ágnes Bihari, originally
published in the Hungarian daily Népszabadság on August
8, 2007
Daniel Baker holds a degree
in sociology and started to write his Ph.D. dissertation last year, but works
as an artist. We met in Venice, at what is the first ever Roma Pavilion in the
history of the 112-year-old Biennale. Because Daniel is Roma; his subject, both
as an artist and as a scholar, is what he knows best: the Roma of England.
“I come from a family of Romani
Gypsies; I live in London, but my grandparents still travelled around Kent.
Travellers represent a big issue in Great Britain. Most of the 300,000 Roma
there would prefer caravanning to settled life, but the laws and the
authorities make this really difficult for them. Caravans are not allowed to
stop for any length of time, and when they do, the police immediately tells
them to move on. Since the authorities do not offer sites where they can have
water and electricity, they in effect push them towards settled life. In
Germany, for instance, this is different: there
all settlements, even the smallest ones, are bound by law to designate a site
where caravans can stop for three days; if they want to stay longer, they must
discuss this with the mayor, and must pay for their stay. We are now
campaigning in England for more sites, and the possibility for families to have
access to education and healthcare wherever they happen to be, because the
present situation is pretty miserable.”
You’d never think Daniel
Baker is a Roma. He looks and talks like any middle-class Anglo-Saxon, though
to be fair, each Roma artist at the opening ceremony in the Palazzo Pisani
owned a different physiognomy, social background and personal history.
“The Roma identity
is rather complex and changeable. There
is of course a stereotype of what a Roma should look like, though the European
Roma are very diverse, if only because historically they crossed a great many
different areas, often mixing with the natives. In Scandinavia, for instance,
there are a lot of blond Roma. In England, incidentally, they appeared about
five centuries ago. For a long time, the English Channel cut them off from the
continent, because travelling by land was what kept them alive. So in the
course of the centuries, they developed their own dialect.
“The family is what gives
us a sense of belonging, it is our anchorage, so in England we think about
clans, not various Roma groups. For me, being a Roma is not a question, but I
also have a strong English identity. But this is true of everyone, is it not? One
of the diverse elements of identity always comes to the fore.”
At the 52nd Venice
Biennale, which lasts until November 21, sixteen European Roma artists exhibit
their works. Daniel Baker presents
pictures painted on mirrors, and ban signs mounted on wooden posts. They are
beautiful, but it helps a lot to be told what gave him the inspiration.
“The mirrors, which I started
to use for canvases four years ago, refer to an imaginary place, which society
created for the Gypsies. We are never seen for what we are. We are either
represented simply as a social problem, or as a Romantic, somewhat mythic
figure, with a fiddle and things like that. This is what the inscriptions in
the works refer to. The wood used for the signs actually comes from an
abandoned caravan site. The prohibitions I painted on them – “No
camping!”; “No entry!” – are obvious references to the restrictions the
Roma caravans encounter during their travels. Those few that still travel, that
is my parents, for instance, met while they were still travelling; their
respective families were wandering between caravan sites in Kent, where
there was a lot of seasonal work in agriculture. Then somebody suddenly bought
the land that gave home to one of the largest permanent caravan sites, and the
authorities offered houses in its vicinity to the caravanners. My parents
accepted the offer, and have been living a settled life ever since. So I and my
six brothers and sisters all went to school proper. I soon proved good at
drawing, and decided I wanted to spend my life in art. And it now looks like
I’ll manage to do just that.”
Photo: Daniel, for years,
has been painting on mirrors, instead of canvas. Photo by Karl Grady.
For the Daniel Baker’s
statement for the Paradise Lost and photography of his work, click here.
For the original article in
Hungarian click here.
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