The work of Romani artist, educator, and activist Małgorzata Mirga-Tas (b. 1978, Zakopane) addresses anti-Roma stereotypes and engages in building an affirmative iconography of Roma communities. Her art depicts everyday life: relationships, alliances, and shared activities. Mirga-Tas’s vibrant textile collages are created from materials and fabrics collected from family and friends, imbuing them with a life of their own and a corresponding immediacy. Textiles made of curtains, jewellery, shirts, and sheets are sewn together to form ‘microcarriers’ of history, with the resulting images revising macro perspectives. Her vibrant works offer a rare opportunity to see the Roma on their own terms, both as a contemporary community and as a people with a rich heritage.Mirga-Tas’s portrayals adopt the perspective of ‘minority feminism’, consciously advocating for women’s strength while acknowledging the artist’s cultural roots. She was the official Polish representative at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, the first Roma artist to represent any country. She graduated from the Faculty of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow in 2004. Her works have been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including: Tate St. Ives (2024), Bonnefanten (2024), Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (2023-2024), Kortrijk Triennial (2024), Barbican (2023), Brücke Museum (2023), 14th Gwangju Biennale (2023), Göteborgs Konsthall (2023), documenta15 (2022), International Cultural Center in Krakow (2022), Guangzhou Triennale in China (2022), 11th Berlin Biennale (2020), Art Encounters Biennale in Timișoara (2019, 2021), 3rd Autostrada Biennale in Prizren (2021), Moravian Gallery in Brno (2017), Polish Sculpture Center in Oronsko (2020), and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2020). She lives and works in Czarna Góra.

Małgorzata joined global dis:connect as an artist fellow.

History of Art/History of Violence: From the Belle Époque to the Genocid

Edouard Manet’s lost painting Les Bohemiens (1862) provides an insight into the relationship between non-Roma artists or bohemians and members of Roma communities in the second half of the 19th century. The first aim of the project is to investigate the relationships between Roma subjects and non-Roma artists in Paris, to restore the visibility and identity of the Roma in relation to contemporary Munich-based art. The second issue is the Roma and Sinti Holocaust. The overarching goal is to look at Roma–non-Roma relations in Munich in the first half of the 20th century, when anti-Roma politics and discrimination grew, ultimately leading to their extermination.

Have a look at Małgorzata’s research poster about her project, on which she worked together with Wojciech Szymański. The two of them also attended an artist talk at global dis:connect.