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For the first time in the over-120-year history of the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, a Roma artist is representing a national pavilion. The project Re-enchanting the World<\/em> by Ma\u0142gorzata Mirga-Tas, prepared specifically for the Polish Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2022, is an attempt to find the place of the Roma community in European art history. The exhibition proposed by curators Wojciech Szyma\u0144ski and Joanna Warsza was the winner of a competition organised by Zach\u0119ta \u2014 National Gallery of Art.<\/p>\n Re-enchanting the World<\/em> is Ma\u0142gorzata Mirga-Tas\u2019s manifesto on Roma identity and art, drawing inspiration from the astrological frescos of the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara. You are about to enter a \u2018picture palace\u2019, an installation of twelve large-format textiles, corresponding to the months of the calendar, which expands the history of art with representations of the culture of the Roma, the largest European minority.<\/p>\n Palazzo Schifanoia is the place which gave rise to art historian Aby Warburg\u2019s concept of Nachleben, the life-after-life of images. The zodiac signs, the decan system, allegories of months, cyclicity and the migration of symbols across time and continents \u2014 between India, Persia, Asia Minor, ancient Greece, Egypt and Europe \u2013 become visual and ideological points of reference for Ma\u0142gorzata Mirga-Tas, who inscribes them in a specific Polish-Roma vernacular historical experience.<\/p>\n The upper band depicts the story of the mythical journey of the Roma to Europe, based on a series of seventeenth-century prints by the Lorraine engraver Jacques Callot, which the artist decolonises. The middle band is an affective archive of Roma herstories, combining images of real women with magic and astrology. The lower band depicts everyday life in the artist\u2019s hometown, Czarna G\u00f3ra, and in other Roma settlements in Podhale and Spi\u0161 in the Tatra mountains.<\/p>\n The title is inspired by Silvia Federici\u2019s book Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons<\/em> (2018). Its author posits recovering the idea of community and rebuilding relationships with others, including non-human actors: animals, plants, water or mountains. This non-violent process, in which women play an important role, reverses the world\u2019s current dire fate, shaking off the evil spell that has been cast upon it.<\/p>\n \u2014Wojciech Szyma\u0144ski & Joanna Warsza.<\/p>\n The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue edited by Wojciech Szyma\u0144ski and Joanna Warsza, which, in addition to the curators\u2019 texts includes essays by specially invited writers (Ali Smith, Damian Le Bas, scholar Ethel Brooks), and poems by Teresa Mirga and Jan Mirga. The catalogue is co-published by Archive Books and ERIAC, and can be also downloaded as a pdf file for free from the website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":4275,"template":"","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\t\n