Opening Speech: Suzana Milevska, curator, art historian, winner of the Igor Zabel Award 2012

ROMAISM is an experimental exhibition project which attempts to construct Roma cultural history through presenting 100 objects: artworks, documents, research materials, archive photos, posters, newspapers, books, videos, websites and items of personal memories from the 1960’s until the present day.

Participating artists: János Balázs, Tibor Balogh, Lada Gaziova, Henrik Kállai, Roland Korponovics, László Kosztics, Erika Lakatos, Katherina Lillquist,  Nihad Nino Pusija, Jolán Oláh, Omara, Teréz Orsós, Tamás Péli, Nihad Nino Pusija, André Raatzsh.

Art historians, curators, etnologists, theorists, sociologists quoted in the exhibition: Thomas Acton, Katalin Aknai, Daniel Baker, Pál Bánszky, Gerhard Baumgartner, László Beke, Tayfun Belgin, Ágnes Daróczi, Péter György, Maria Hlavajova, Jana Horvathova, Karel Holomek, Timea Junghaus, István Kerékgyártó, Katalin Keserű, Angéla Kóczé, Éva Judit Kovács, Edit Kőszegi, Menyhért Lakatos, Suzana Milevska, Mária Neményi, Gábor Pataki, Salman Rushdie, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Anna Szász, Katalin Székely, Péter Szuhay, Jenő Zsigó.

The exhibition is a participatory and accumulative project.

Curators: Timea Junghaus, Veronka Vaspál

Consultant: Péter Szuhay

On view until April 4, 2013.

Image: Omara: My Eye Operation, 1989, oil, fiberboard, Collection of FROKK. Omara – Roma woman artist - walked into the National Gallery of Budapest with this painting in her hand in 1989 and asked the chief curator if she shall continue painting.

 ERCF celebrated the Grand Opening of Gallery8 Roma Contemporary Art Space, on Friday, the 15th of February 2013 from 3 p.m. – 4 p.m. at Mátyás tér 13. Budapest, H – 1084.

ERCF was informed today about the death of the artist, writer and musician, Ceija Stojka. Ceija Stojka was from the Lovari ethnic group the fifth of six children, her sisters of Karl Stojka and Mongo Stojka, were also writers and musicians. Together with her mother and four of the five brothers she survived the Holocaust and the internment at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Her father in 1941 was deported to the Dachau concentration camp, then he was killed in Schloss Hartheim. In 1943, the whole Stojka family was deported into the Auschwitz Birkenau II. concentration camp, where most of them were executed. Ceija Stojka survived the Holocaust, but these never forgettable experiences become a central and eternal theme of her artistic work since 1989. Her paintings reflect upon the entrenched sorrow in the bodies and spirit of the victims. There are several books, films and artistic works which are capturing her life.

She was a charismatic author and she wrote the first Roma autobiographical account on the Nazi persecution. The book was published in 1988 with the title “We Live in Seclusion: The Memories of a Romni”. It made the European public aware about the struggle of Austrian Roma in the Nazi persecution. Later on in 1992 she published another autobiographical book called: “Reisende auf dieser Welt /"Travellers on This World". Besides painting and writing Ceija also sang in Romanes.

In 1989, at the age of 56, Ceija Stojka began to paint. Her work has been exhibited in western and eastern Europe and in Japan. In 2005 the Jewish Museum of Vienna organized an exhibition with the title of „ Ceija Stojka, Leben!”.   In 2010 for the first time her artworks have been exhibited in the U.S.  Her ars poetica declared: „I always try to portray my feelings and memories. I want to show my own world to the people. It is important to understand that, we are all human beings and art allows us to live and exist. Art can demonstrate and connect us„. Her artistic account offers stories and visual representation of trauma as a new means to face with the past in order to start a new and meaningful dialogue and challenge the various forms of discrimination and violence in the present Europe. Ceija Stoika, was an outstanding Austrian Romani woman, one of the members of The Romani Elders of Europe, and a key figure for the history, art, and literature of Romani culture in Europe. She was a role model for the present generation and an inspiration for the future generations of Roma in Europe!

Suzana Milevska, winner of the Igor Zabel Award 2012, awarded the laureate's working grant to the European Roma Cultural Foundation . ERCF took part in the Award Ceremony, organized by Erste Stiftung in Warsaw, on November 16, 2012. ERCF was first surprised and than honored to take this prize!

“I want to give the grant to the European Roma Cultural Foundation (ERCF), an independent non-profit foundation that was established in 2010, in Budapest, Hungary, with the principal goal of strengthening and widely promoting the role of the arts and culture of Roma people in an enlarged Europe and elsewhere. The team behind this organisation (its Advisory and Curatorial Board) consists of several Roma and not-Roma theorists and curators who have dedicated their careers to revising the received knowledge about the traditional and contemporary art and culture of Roma by pinning down issues debated through post-colonial theory and critique such as essentialisation of Roma identity, cultural differences, hybridisation and subjectivity. The research of the ERCF and their curatorial and activist projects are engaged in a continual fight against negative stereotypes and hostile attitudes towards Roma communities by dealing with the most delicate and urgent issues, such as the Roma Holocaust, anti-Roma sentiment and racism. I strongly believe that Roma communities and all of us will benefit from their profound and committed approach and from their fight for social justice for Roma communities in the extremely hostile nationalist-oriented political environment of contemporary Hungary.” (Suzana Milevska) 

ERCF staff  attended the International Conference and Workshop for Multipliers held in Eisenstadt, Austria on November 8-10, 2012. The seminar focused on the implementation of the New Teaching Materials on the Genocide of the Roma and Sinti developed by the ITF -International Task Force for Holocaust Education.  The ERCF members met teachers, trainers and other multipliers from Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, the Netherlands and Poland, who will all be involved in implementing these teaching materials in the coming years.  This first seminar initiated the implementation of teaching materials on the Roma genocide, ‘The Fate of the European Roma and Sinti during the Holocaust’, by jointly preparing lesson plans and workshop formats which shall be put into practice by the multipliers in the following year. The second seminar in 2013 will evaluate this first phase of implementation. ERCF was proud to receive the Roma Holocaust Educator - and Multiplier of  'The Fate of the European Roma and Sinti during the Holocaust’ -training's Certificate.

Image: Johann Wilhelm "Rukeli" Trollmann, Sinto boxer, victim of the Holocaust