Keres kultura! / We Create Culture! (Contemporary Art and Roma Identity)

The Central Slovak Gallery in cooperation with the Slovak National Gallery and the Banská Bystrica self-governing region invites you to the opening of the exhibition.

The thematic frame of the exhibition is the Roma identity and its (self)critical reflection, or to use more academic terminology, visual discourse of Roma identity. Exhibition KERES KULTURA! / WE CREATE CULTURE! (Contemporary Art and Roma Identity) will present the work of young generation of artists, mostly but not exclusively of Roma who work with the theme, or it might be better to say IN the theme of Roma identity and they critically reflect on it. Unlike a number of exhibitions of rather idyllic-minded naive art by the Roma, we intend to present vivid, discursive, current contemporary art, which invokes the tradition, but in many ways it argues with it and is rather critical of it, too.

Professional Roma artists are now a natural part of the art scene; they may or may not identify with Roma identity just like non-Roma artists do or do not identify with different aspects of their identities. "Roma art" seems not to exist. Similarly, there is no ethnically (or essentially) Slovak art. However, there is art that critically reflects its Romacity (Slovacity), its romipen… This experience, we believe, may be more generally true and transferable.

The Roma topics and "Romacity" have been intensively discussed in the former Western countries especially in recent years as a universal metaphor of the world on the move, an experience of hostility and exclusion also in the context of the latest migration waves and chauvinistic echoes it has created. There is also an analogy between the Artist and the Roma (for example, in the common concept Bohéma), both dealing with separation, otherness, certain structural and social differences.

Authors: Robert Gabris (AT/SK), Krzysztof Gil (PL), Sead Kazanxhiu (AL), Denis Kozerawski (SK), Delaine Le Bas (UK), Ľuboš Kotlár (SK), Małgorzata Mirga-Tas (PL), Tamara Moyzes (CZ/SK), Emília Rigová (SK), Selma Selman (USA/BiH).

Curators: Emília Rigová, Petra Hanáková

Venue: Praetorium, Nám Štefana Moysesa 25, Banská Bystrica

Exhibition opening: 22. 10. 2019 at 5 p.m. (Tuesday)

Duration of the exhibition: 22. October 2019 - 23. February 2020

Supported from public sources by the Slovak Arts Council. The project was implemented thanks to the financial support of the Banská Bystrica self-governing region and ERSTE Foundation. The exhibition is a part of the activities of the newly established Office of Roma Art and Culture at PF UMB.