Cultural Politics and Cloth: Julia Griffin in Conversation with Małgorzata Mirga-Taś

Issue 108: Farm

‘The Roma are the single most discriminated against community in the world. For example, we settled down in Poland in the 15th century and have lived in Czarna Góra since 1700, so we can hardly be considered as refugees… In fact, Poland was the first country in the world to have passed a law against persecuting Roma, granting them freedom of movement. However, the history of cruelty against Roma in other countries is appalling. For example, until the 18th century Roma were still being sold in markets in some parts of the world.’

Małgorzata Mirga-Taś is a Polish-Romani artist from the Podhale Region of the Tatra, in the Carpathian Mountains in southern Poland. She represents Poland at the Venice Biennale as the first Roma artist ever to take over a national Biennale pavilion in the show’s 150-year history. She talks to Julia Griffin, an Anglo-Polish art historian and curator specialising in British and Polish art.

Julia Griffin: How did you become an artist?
Małgorzata Mirga-Taś: I come from a family who have always valued a good education. This is thanks to my grandparents, who cared about our schooling. From an early age I have always drawn and painted. My mum would take me to art classes in Zakopane and would wait for me at the local park until the class ended. As a teenager I originally chose a weaving college only to discover I was allergic to wool, so I transferred to cabinet making at the Antoni Kenar Art College instead, although I wasn’t much better with wood dust [laughter]. My parents support to do what I love has been key for my career choice too. I also encourage my sons to be true to their interests.

JG: How did you develop an interest in textiles?
MM-T: It came as a natural consequence of my thinking about various aspects of the creative process and ecology. I wanted to be able to create works which would bring together the properties of painting, sculpture and fabric. I was equally concerned with recycling and giving textiles a second life. I am also interested in Aby Warburg’s notion of the ‘afterlife’ of images. In my work I often use fragments of my (old) favourite clothes as well as the garments of my loved ones. Such fabrics not only carry the personal histories, energy and power of the people who had once worn them but also reflect the migration of textiles between countries or continents. The women in my family have always sewn; my grandmother even made and embroidered traditional bodices for Highlander women [Highlanders or Mountaineers are the indigenous inhabitants of the Tatra Mountains]. As part of my project ‘Side Thawenca—Sewn with our own Threads’ I seek to strengthen the sense of unity amongst the Roma by collaborating with Roma women with various communities; we sew fabrics into stories drawn from the verses of Roma poets. Introducing Roma words into the completed patchworks is a key part of this endeavour: it helps to cultivate and develop our identity. In the case of my exhibition at the Venice Biennale, I had the idea to try and clothe the Pavilion, including its interior as well as the facade. I think of my patchwork pieces as sculptures made from cloth.

JG: You refer to your work as ‘identity art’. Could you say more about this aspect? How do you define your own identity?
MM-T: My works have always been concerned with the central theme of my identity on three overlapping levels–as a woman, as a Roma, and as a Pole. However, the overarching theme of my art is the Roma, the Roma identity. I draw from my own and my family’s archives. I show the normal, ordinary life of the people close to me. I don’t show anything new or shocking. This shows the truth about the Roma. My works depict us as people who have the same life concerns as everyone else–different experiences, sorrows, and problems. Roma are being excluded because of the public perception that they are different. Although it is diversity which makes up collective identities in any society, the Roma are the single most discriminated against community in the world. For example, we settled down in Poland in the 15th century and have lived in Czarna Góra since 1700, so we can hardly be considered as refugees.

Image: Małgorzata Taś, Re-enchanting the World, exhibition view, Polish Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2022. Image above: Preparations for the exhibition Re-enchanting the World in the studio of Małgorzata Mirga-Taś Zakopane. Ma gorzata on the left, Halina Bednarz on the right, seamstress and one of three artist’s collaborators in preparation of the work. They were working on the textile installation for five months in this studio in Zakopane, close to Malgorzata’s hometown. The studio was made in the closed hotel Imperial, that was waiting for demolition and renovation.

JG: You are a Roma artist. Your work revolves around the subject of the Roma identity and the condition of women. In recent years you have been working with textiles, a medium considered by some conservative members of the art establishment as inferior to the fine arts such as painting. How hard has it been for you to break through?
MM-T: Although I graduated in 2004, I have only really been able to overcome exclusion over the past couple of years. In 2010 I set up a Roma art group ‘JAW DIKH’ and began organising residencies for Roma artists from all around the world at my home. However, for many years I had received hardly any exhibition proposals from art museums and galleries. I had, of course, been able to organise shows at Jewish institutes and cultural centres (which always support the Roma), and at ethnographic museums. A breakthrough for me came in 2020 when the curator Lisette Lagnado invited me to the Berlin Biennale, which showcased identity artists from all around the world. Lagnado told me at the time that she was inviting me because she could see I was a real fighter. I exhibited patchwork screens telling the story of three generations of women from my family–including my grandmother, who survived the Holocaust, Nazi raids and forced labour at a quarry; and my mother, who survived Communism. Since the time of the Berlin Biennale things have been easier for me; but even as Roma children, my sister, my cousins and I had to prove twice harder we deserved the same as our non-Roma peers. Roma artists are still finding it hard to break through stigmatising structures, although things are beginning to slowly change for the better. In Berlin there is The European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) dedicated to the visual arts, poetry and music. There is a branch in Serbia and further branches under way. Roma artists are also represented in the current edition of Documenta und Museum Fridericianum GmbH in Kassel, Germany, a museum set up after World War II in order to present art that had been condemned by the Nazis.

JG: How did you come up with the concept for your installation at the Venice Biennale?
MM-T: It has been a collaboration with two curators I had been friends with for a while–Wojciech Szymański and Joanna Warsza. It was important for me to be able to represent three aspects of identity, namely the question of the colonial appropriation of the Roma people’s past and the need to retell our story afresh; secondly the ‘herstories’ of Roma women; and showing the everyday life of the Roma community today. In Italy in Ferrara there is a Renaissance building, Palazzo Schifanoia, decorated in figurative wall paintings showing the twelve months of the year. The walls feature friezes spanning across the top, middle and bottom, each depicting scenes from the past, astrology and contemporary life respectively. This scheme inspired my installation. At the top tier, I depict the migration of the Roma people and their history, re-creating the 17th-century scenes by the draughtsman and printmaker Jacques Callot. As a non-Roma artist, Callot depicted the journey of the Roma, calling them Egyptians. Of course, we are happy to know what our life looked like and what we looked like at the time. 

However, I take back the imagery appropriated by Callot and I transform it afresh by changing whole compositions. In particular, I point out those entrenched details I disagree with, and which have unfortunately stigmatised this migrating group and in doing so, laid the foundation of today’s misconceptions about the Roma. At the bottom I depict modern Roma’s daily experience. In the middle frieze I show the women from my family in the context of Tarot symbolism. Whilst Venetians had originally used Tarot for ordinary games of cards, it was the migrating Roma community passing through Venice which first adopted Tarot for fortune-telling and psychoanalytic readings. 

Image: Małgorzata Mirga-Taś, Out of Egypt, 2021. Image courtesy of Zachęta National Gallery of Art.

JG: How has your exhibition at the Venice Biennale been received so far?
MM-T: Roma are the oldest and largest ethnic minority in Europe so this year the Polish Pavilion which showcases my exhibition is transnational. It opens out onto the whole world. Roma visitors from all over Italy and other countries have been coming to see it. They have been crying tears of joy inside because they feel that their history has been respectfully told by a Roma artist and that their heritage is being duly appreciated. Whilst a separate Roma Pavilion had been created back in 2007, this falls outside the scope of the competition and is situated outside the main exhibition area of the Venice Biennale. The Italian Minister of Culture, who comes from Ferrara, has visited the Polish Pavilion and we are talking about showing my artworks at Ferrara after the Biennale. I could not be happier or more overwhelmed because of the reactions so far.

JG: What are you planning to do next?
MM-T: My life has not changed. I am continuing with the same pursuits. A few days ago, I was painting traditional caravans with Roma teenagers. My husband Marcin is a print-maker, and we are currently putting together an animation about Alfreda Noncia Markowska (1926–2021), a Polish Roma who saved some fifty Jewish and Roma children during World War II. Like her fellow humanitarian Irena Sendler, Alfreda never revealed anything about her work; it only came to light a few years ago when the adult survivors notified the Polish President. I am also planning to do a project with Roma women in Sweden. However, I am not saying that I will never take up a non-identity subject (laughter).
The Milk of Dreams La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy until 27 November 2022

Cultural Politics and Cloth: Julia Griffin in Conversation with Małgorzata Mirga-Taś was an article by Julia Griffin published in Selvedge Issue 108: Farm.