THOMAS ACTON (Emeritus Professor of Romani Studies, University of Greenwich, United Kingdom)

The New Romani Art

This lecture considers the question: what is the story of the recent emergence of contemporary Roma visual art? Sociology calls the production of visual art “representation,” but when artists call it “bearing witness” it suddenly becomes more urgent. Bearing witness is an action that requires an active subject. For centuries, visual art bearing witness about the lives of Roma/Gypsies/Travellers has existed, in which they have been only the passive objects of representation. But in the past few years, the emergence of a new Romani art has identified the missing subject and invited it to step forward. When you look into one of artist Daniel Baker’s mirror pieces, you see a human subject: yourself. When you take a photo of one, you create your own unique new work of art, anchored to the memory of your own time and place of contemplation. But Roma/Gypsies/Travellers cannot bear witness without raising the question of why that witnessing was suppressed for 500 years. So the story of how Roma art has suddenly burst upon the international scene, and its presence at the Venice Biennale, is untellable unless we also re-shape the historical narrative of the marginalization, brutalization, intermittent genocide, and exclusion of Roma from European history. (Thomas Acton)