Exhibitions

ROMA BODY POLITICS II. Archive of Desires

Opening: April 8, 5 p.m.

Opening speech: Mária Bogdán, media theorist
Slam poetry performance: Péter Molnár, freedom of speech researcher

Artists: Imre Bukta, Lada Gaziova, Tamara Moyzes, Csaba Nemes, Selma Selman

Researching the photo archives of the Roma collections in Hungarian public collections we find an outrageous number of Roma pictures either fulfill the quite ill –natured desires of the collectors or are simply improper and offensive. We process these problematic photos with the participation of Roma and non-Roma contemporary artists.  

After this deconstruction of the „great historical archive” we will comprehend the artworks with the research into the family archives of the new generation of Hungarian Roma activism in the frame of a unique community project focusing on the specificities of subjective archives.  We will present the works of the contemporary artists, together with the family collections. The disrupted and transgressed majority images together with the images of personal history will form our Roma „Archive of Desires.”

Roma Body Politics is an extensive and intercultural (Roma – non-Roma) exhibition series and educational program aimed at exploring, documenting and making visible the Roma body politics in present-day Europe. The project, which was realized with the help of Roma artists and intellectuals, focuses on the depiction, representation and participation of Roma – and especially Roma women – in the media, art and public life.

The mission of Gallery8 is the liberation of the Roma body – and therefore the liberation of Roma people. Roma bodies are not described here as a way to objectify, re-shape or dis-figure Roma. Instead, the Roma body is the vehicle in this initiative for finding specific practices to “re/configurate diasporic gazes into subjects and to invite ourselves to be viewers; to uncover the colonial discourse inscribed in us and to depict it in exhibitions so that it is quasi disenchanted, to unmask the Western master-discourse as a historical legend”[1].

Captions

[1] Peggy Piesche et.al.: Museum. Space. History: New Sites of Political Tectonics. A virtual exchange between Belinda Kazeem, Nicola Lauré al-Samarai, and Peggy Piesche. Translated by Tim Sharp. Transversal, June 2008.  http://eipcp.net/transversal/0708/kazeemetal/en