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“The intention to exhibit works of art by Roma at the prestigious Venice Biennale is a veritable landmark which the Council of Europe welcomes without reserve.”
-- Alexander Vladychenko, Director General, Council of Europe, Directorate General III – Social Cohesion
“The European Commission attaches great importance to protection and respect of minority rights, in particular of the Roma, who constitute the largest ethnic minority across the European Union. This has been a key element in our strategy. I wish you very success in this exciting project!”
-- José Manuel Barroso, President, European Commission
“The Roma community is the largest minority in many of the European countries participating in the Venice Biennale. Therefore, it is a natural ambition of the Roma intellectuals to establish a Roma Pavilion, where the art of Roma can enter the international arena for the first time in history.”
-- Jan Figel, Member of the European Commission
„It is importnat for the marginalized and vilified ethnic minority to preserve and strengthen its cultural identity. The Roma Pavilion may also help to discredit the prevailing sterotypes of Roma.“
-- George Soros, Chairman, Open Society Institute
“In the world of growing number of nations, with voluntary and forced migrations, there is no other nation that has lived in inter-cultural spaces longer then Roma… They can be from India, from Central Africa, from the edges of Europe, but they have been there for many years and that is why it is important to present them at the Biennale, as an acknowledgement of their existence.”
-- Robert Storr, Director of the 52nd Venice Biennale
“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.”
-- Michael Toss, Director, Allianz Kulturstiftung
“The Roma Pavilion marks the arrival of contemporary Roma culture on the international stage and sends an important message of inclusion: the Roma have a vital role to play in the cultural and political landscape of Europe.”
-- Aryeh Neier, President, Open Society Institute
“As delightful as remarkable - placing Roma participation outside the typical social and human rights focus and showing that Roma culture goes well beyond narrow folklore. We definitely need more of this to change public perception.”
-- Christian Bodewig, World Bank Bulgaria Country Office
“It is time to correct our image of the largest minority in Europe, which is still shaped by Gypsy romance and Gypsy kitsch. This misconception has lured us into false believe that the misery which the Roma people were forced to endure for centuries was actually an act of self-chosen freedom. Let us clear our heads and open our ears and eyes to the creative potential of this first genuine European culture, which can only enrich our understanding of a future Europe without borders.”
-- Wim Wenders, Film Director
“I see the use of strong outlining in Gypsy paintwork as an attempt to maintain clear boundary definition between diverse elements whilst at the same time seeking compositional harmony – a concern echoed in the Romani peoples’ desire to preserve their cultural identity from the perceived threat of assimilation.”
-- Daniel Baker, Artist, exhibited in “Paradise Lost”
“As a Romani, my viewpoint has always been that of the outsider, and this position of the ‘other’ is reflected in the materials and messages within my work. We live in a culture of mixed values and garbled messages. My works are crafted from the disregarded and disparate objects of the car-boot sale and the charity shop. A bricollage of materials. Employing the materials of the everyday, all formed together in a manner that allows then to be precious yet reclaimed.”
-- Delaine Le Bas, Artist, exhibited in “Paradise Lost”
“I could have called all my exhibitions DUENDE, which is the flamenco trance, what enables us to live in a community, to feel this is our part in nature, to understand who we are and what position things assume in space. In other words, it is the Gypsies’ voodoo. So while you see washing lines in my pictures, mud, piles of garbage, caravan camps and Gypsies, I can see happiness there, my family, and what I am.”
-- Gabi Jimenez, Artist, exhibited in “Paradise Lost”
“I think this pavilion is strange and important – from many points of view even crucial to the history of the Venice Biennale… it questions the concept of national representation at the Biennale.”
-- Viktor Misiano, art critic, curator
“The Roma are probably the only thing Europe has that is truly European… (The Roma Pavilion) is probably the most sincere survey of art from a community that properly questions our ideas of what a nation, nationhood or national representation actually is or could be.”
-- Flash Art, Aaron Multon
“Das ist so ziemlich das Gegenteil, dessen, was man aus Deutschland hört. Zigeuner - das sei ein diskriminierender Fremdbegriff, meint der Zentralrat der Sinti und Roma. Die jungen Künstler in Venedig sehen das anders. Sie benutzen das Wort als einen positiven Kampfbegriff mit dem Verlangen nach Emanzipation und Anrecht auf ein Stück Normalität und Respekt.”
-- Die Welt
“Very good, really interesting work. Congratulations!”
-- Fogarasi Andràs, 52nd Biennale, Hungarian Pavilion
“Real discovery at this Biennale was the first Roma Pavilion.”
-- Gazeta Wyborscza
“We are extremely happy for your presence in Rome, in this university, as an artist first, then as a woman and as a Roma person. We believe that the city of Rome must continue to be the City of Welcome to all kinds of races and people, as it has been for centuries in history”
-- Jean-Leonard Touadi, Deputy Mayor and Integration Commissioner of the City of Rome, meeting Delaine Le Bas, an artist represented in the First Roma Pavilion, at a presentation of the Pavilion at the University Sapienza in Rome on November 26, 2007.
“We are you, and you are us - we are the same. We can be hurt the same, we cry the same. We are just called Roma. Love us as you love our music and art. Just look inside your heart before you make a judgment and statement: remember that one God made us all.”
-- Damian Draghici, Romanian Pan-flute virtuoso, after his performance at the Festival Si Rom co-produced by the First Roma Pavilion and the City of Venice, in Venice in October 2007
“Roma are peace-loving people. They have never been in war and have never occupied anyone. Roma are cosmopolitan nation.”
-- Esma Redzepova, musician from Macedonia, in an interview to the Roma Pavilion News given after her performance in Venice in September 2007
“I think that better understanding of Roma culture in the present has the same importance as the understanding of Central and East European peoples’ cultures had at the beginning of the XX century.”
-- Tünde Erika Pálosi, one of the Chachipe contest winners, in an interview to the Roma Pavilion News.
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