Małgorzata Mirga-Tas

15 Sep - 11 Nov 2023 Golden Square

Frith Street Gallery is pleased to present the first UK exhibition of artist, educator and activist Małgorzata Mirga-Tas. Mirga-Tas’s work addresses anti-Romani stereotypes and engages in building an affirmative iconography of Romani communities. She often depicts everyday life: relationships, alliances and shared activities. The artist’s vibrant textile collages are created from materials and fabrics collected from family and friends, which imbues them with a life of their own and a corresponding immediacy. Patchworks made of curtains, jewellery, shirts, and sheets are sewn together to form so-called 'microcarriers' of history, just as resulting images revise macro perspectives.

The series of portraits in this exhibition is entitled Siukar Manusia (which can be translated from Romani as great, or wonderful people). The images are of first-generation Romani inhabitants of the Nowa Huta district in eastern Kraków and have evolved from two earlier projects. In 2019 the artist collaborated with a Kosovan Romani community to create HERSTORIES, a series of portraits of extraordinary Romani women, both local and international. This in turn lead to Mirga-Tas’s celebrated presentation Re-enchanting the World in The Polish Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022. This large installation was inspired in part by the renaissance frescos in the Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara, which the art historian Aby Warburg used to illustrate the recurrence of certain artistic motifs across cultures and centuries.

The imagery employed in the works shown at Golden Square is drawn from personal photographs shared with the artist by friends and family as well as the vast audiovisual archives of the USC Shoah Foundation that holds the testimonies of Romani Holocaust survivors. A parallel inspiration was the book O Romach w Nowej Hucie słów Kilka (A handful of facts on the Nowa Huta Roma) by Monika Szewczyk as well as the life story of Krystyna Gil (1938–2021) the first Romani tram driver and a former resident of Nowa Huta whose portrait is also in the exhibition. These are people who are personally important to Mirga-Tas, ranging from concentration camp survivors and Roma activists to eminent musicians. The portraits are realised using found and donated textiles, carefully selected and constructed by the artist and her studio assistants to provide both new life to the discarded clothes and a visibility and dignity to the people wearing them.
Małgorzata Prusak, 2022
During World War II Małgorzata Prusak was placed in a forced-labour camp near Nowy Targ, along with her brother and parents. She was the first Roma in Nowa Huta to pass Poland's secondary school final exams. She was awarded the Cross of Merit for her many years' work.
Augustyn Gabor z córką Elżbietą / Augustyn Gabor with his daughter Elżbieta, 2022
Augustyn Gabor was as born into a family of musicians. An eminent violinist: in the inter-war period, he played with orchestras across Hungary. To this day, the oldest resident of Kachin remember him as a consummate musician and a well-to-do man, who was treated with respect and reverence. He moved to Nowa Huta along with every Romani living in Kacwin.
Anna i Jan Gilowie / Anna and Jan Gil, 2022
Anna Gil survived the war in hiding; she worked in a single place of employment for forty years, as a result of which she was awarded the Cross of Merit. Jan Gil was among the first builders of Nowa Huta; for many years, a worker at the Lenin Steelworks.
'I chose this background to show that they came to us from darkness and we see them, and they are visible now and they have their own voice. They can say something about themselves. And we give them dignity; I give them dignity.'
Katarzyna Oraczko z synem Leszkiem / Katarzyna Oraczko with her son Leszek, 2022
Katarzyna Oraczko was born in 1931 in Trybsz and she became Nowa Huta in the 1950s, together with her husband Andrzej Oraczko. She worked as a cook in a Kraków restaurant.
Krystyna Gil, 2022
Romani activist, witness to history, first Romani tram driver. Krystyna Gil's family was murdered in 1943; she was imprisoned by the Nazis in Plaszow concentration camp. Founder and director of the Association of Romani Women in Poland. She came to Nowa Huta in the 1950s from Szczurowa, her home village.
Marian Gil, 2022
Marian Gil came to Nowa Huta with his family in the 1950s. As a sixteen-year-old, he started working at the Lenin Steelworks. In 1994 he set up the Roma Association in Kraków and was its president for twenty-three years. He established the Legal Advice Office, where the Roma could reach out to help. The association conducted educational and employment programmes for the Roma in Nowa Huta, during the transition from a communist system to a democratic, free-market one.
'I think it's very important to collaborate with the Roma people. When I want to talk about somebody, I cannot start without the family, and without trust.'
Wanda Siwak, 2022
Concentration camp prisoner. During World War ll Wanda Siwak's family was shot dead by the Germans. After the war, she found her sister (Edward Dunka's mother) in the Recovered Territories (former German lands that were awarded to Poland in 1945). She would spend the rest of her life searching for her daughter, who had been hidden from the Germans in area that is now part of Ukraine. On her deathbed, she asked her nephew Edward Dunka to continue the search.
Edward Dunka, 2022
Activist for the Rom und Cinti Union in Hamburg since the 1980s. In 1983 Edward Dunka took part in the hunger strike at the site of the Neuengamme concentration camp, as well as in pickets, protest marches, and church sit-ins; he took on the role of spokesperson for the Roma facing deportation. In Ukraine, he ultimately found the family of Wanda Siwak's daughter, who had been hidden from the Germans by her mother.
Andrzej Oraczko z córką Grażyną / Andrzej Oraczko with his daughter Grażyna, 2022
Andrzej Oraczko was born in 1927 in Łapse Wyżne. He lived in Nowa Huta as of the 1950s and worked at the Lenin Steelworks. He was a talented self-taught musician and fiddler. An honest and upbeat person, he liked helping others.
‘All these portraits and representations from Roma settlements arise from the need to preserve, to remember [...] It’s a bit like when my grandmother used to tell us stories about exceptional Roma. And now I do the same in my works.’
Polskie napisy
Małgorzata Mirga-tas: Guardian Interview
Mirga-Tas, through the vigorous clarity of her art, is a force for change. She is speaking loud and clear in her own voice- and with authority. – Charlotte Higgins

In a recent interview for the Guardian, Charlotte Higgins visited Małgorzata Mirga-Tas in her studio where they discussed the artist’s practice, her burgeoning career in the wake of presentations at the Venice Biennale and Documenta last year, and forthcoming exhibitions.
Installation photography: Ben Westoby

Videography: Jon Lowe

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Małgorzata Mirga-Tas

Installation photography: Ben Westoby

Videography: Jon Lowe

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