Roma art deconstructs clichés at the Mucem
About the exhibition "Barvalo - Roms, Sinti, Manouches, Gitans, Voyageurs...", on show at the Mucem in Marseille until 4 September.
What fascinates is often ostracised. And so it is with the Roma community, which has been the focus of the most persistent stereotypes for nine centuries. In the 120-year history of the Venice Biennale, 2022 marked the first time that a Roma artist, Malgorzata Mirga-Tas, had occupied a national pavilion, in this case that of Poland. The 'Barvalo' exhibition at Marseille's Mucem does a marvellous job of deconstructing clichés, in a historical, social and artistic narrative of rare originality. And with good reason: this magnificent journey into gypsy culture was conceived from a Romani point of view. For Beaux Arts Magazine, Natacha Wolinski took the tour and reminds readers that "barvalo" is a word that means "rich", and by extension "proud" in Romani. Exactly what we want the Roma to be when they leave the Mucem!
Throughout the exhibition, visitors are accompanied virtually by four 'guides' belonging to four distinct Romani groups. Their personal and family stories resonate with a broader, shared European history. In each section, the works of non-Romani artists are displayed alongside those of contemporary Romani sculptors, photographers and painters, enabling the representatives of these minorities to give their vision of nine centuries of presence in Europe and cultural affirmation. The exhibition brings together 200 works and documents (printed, video and sound) from French and European public and private collections.
"This exhibition came about thanks to an American anthropologist, Jonah Steinberg, who, on a visit to the Mucem in 2014, was astonished to find nothing on the Roma, despite the fact that they are Europe's largest ethnic minority (between 10 and 12 million people)", explains Julia Ferloni, curator at the Mucem and co-curator of the event. "He wrote to us, and we decided to go ahead with the project. Especially as we had many objects linked to the Romani world in our collections. As the journalist from Beaux Arts Magazine points out, "the Mucem collection is largely based on the collections of the former Musée national des arts et traditions populaires, built up by the museologist Georges Henri Rivière, who was very interested in the culture of the Roma of Eastern Europe. This interest was reinforced by the commitment of André Malraux, the former Minister of Cultural Affairs, who in 1964 called for the creation of "a genuine museum for everything to do with Gypsies and similar populations".
Nevertheless, "when we delved into our collection, we realised that many items were indexed in a racist way", admits Julia Ferloni. "For the exhibition, we have renamed those with problematic titles, opting for the generic term 'Roma', which has been accepted by all communities since the World Romani Congress in 1971. But we are also including on the labels the old titles or designations that use words like "Bohemian" or "Gypsy", because we feel it is necessary to keep track of successive terminologies. We are in the process of re-evaluating the entire collection, which comprises 900 items. It will take several more years of work.
And when the curator refers to "pieces", she is really talking about genuine works of art. In the course of this unusual art gallery, we can admire an incomplete antique marble from the Louvre, representing the goddess Artemis, but which the sculptor Nicolas Cordier completed in the 17th century with a bronze "gypsy" head, sacrificing it to the fantasy of the beautiful Zingarella. There is also a painting by the English painter Edwin Longsden Long, on loan from London's Royal Holloway, which evokes the expulsion of gypsies from Spain in the 17th century, at the height of the ethnic and religious purge, and prints by Jacques Callot. Of course, it's hard to imagine that the chilling wooden sign that threatened passing Roma at the entrance to the cities of the Holy Roman Empire with having their breasts cut off, whipped, tortured on the wheel or hanged could ever have been a work of art for sale, or the extremely rare document from 1848 freeing Romanian Roma from slavery.
Art and history are constantly intertwined in this splendid and fascinating exhibition. "The history of the Romani is inseparable from that of anti-Gypsyism," explains Anna Mirga-Kruszelnicka. "They arrived in southern Europe in the 13th century, then moved northwards and spread across the continent. With their oriental clothes and rich, attractive culture, they were welcomed, especially as they were pious Christians who often made the pilgrimage to Rome. But very quickly, in the troubled period between the 13th and 17th centuries when Europe was invaded by the Mongols and then the Ottomans, they were perceived as a threat. Since then, there has always been this ambivalence in the way they are perceived: they are associated with the romanticism of travel, but they are also identified as undisciplined populations, obeying no rules".
Valérie Leray's photos of the former internment camps for "nomads" from 1940 to 1946 in Arles, Montsûrs and Mulsanne, portraits of resistance fighters and combatants, video testimonies from people interned in the camps... all these poignant documents stand alongside contemporary Roma artworks that border on the equally unbearable. Like the black and white canvas by Polish artist Marcin Tas, based on a photograph taken in the health and hygiene service of the Third Reich. Austrian artist Ceija Stojka, a survivor of three concentration camps, depicts executions in the Auswitch forest on crude cardboard... Four of her acrylic paintings have been added to the museum's collections. Mucem has already bought around twenty works of art created by Romani artists from all over the world," says Julia Ferloni. We are going to continue this acquisition policy. We feel it is necessary to update our collections by acquiring new pieces that are less influenced by an old, stigmatising vision.
While Roma communities want to see the tragedies of history recognised, they are also looking for a different, more positive kind of recognition. And the "Barvalo - Roma, Sinti, Manouches, Gitans, Voyageurs..." exhibition responds precisely to this legitimate concern. The exhibition features works of contemporary art, as well as personalities from the Roma world, whose portraits are drawn by the artist Emanuel Barica. The poetess Papusza, the guitarist Django Reinhardt, the actress Alina Serban, the political activist Helios Gomez... all embody the diversity and dynamism of a community.
Artist Gabi Jimenez will have the final word with her "gadjo museum" installed at the heart of the exhibition, like a mirror held up to the non-Roma visitor. "This installation questions the role of the society museum in transmitting a stereotyped and essentializing image of the other (...) I am influenced by my culture but also by thousands of other things. I don't want to be reduced to my gypsy identity alone.
Illustration : Gabi Jimenez, Caravanes sous deux cyprès, 2001. Huile sur toile © Gabi Jimenez, photo : Mucem / Marianne Kuhn