Roma Concept

The artworks at the Roma Concept exhibition is closely related with the manifestation that, Roma art is not any longer limited to producing works only within the concept of objects and the long established paradigms based on naming. The artists invite the audience into the sphere of thoughts, ideas and concepts, and in this non-traditional world without objects they experiment with new structures of their consciousness. This estrangement from the “real” towards mentality, opens the new, philosophical dimensions of Roma self-consciousness, and substantiates infinite number of associations connecting to Roma self-realization, Roma pride and identity.

The young artist, Lili Csokonai is exhibiting for the first time at Gallery8 (Lili Csokonai is a pen name referring Péter Eszterházy’s bestseller novel, Seventeen Swans (which was also published under this pen name) featuring a young Roma girl). Her installation: Our Little Roma Activist presents a nicely furnished glass cube where a black mouse lives its ordinary life in front of a rather depressing Arpad-striped background (The Arpad-striped flag became the symbol of the Hungarian Neo-Nazi forces since 2008). Our Roma Activist sometimes gets in his own rat- race-wheel, only to turn the „I have a dream” text written on its surface.

József Kővári Borz exhibits the changeable portraits of his private hero collection, the photos of the ordinary men and women he met and he grew to respect during the Vándormozi initiative, he leads. Gyula Galyas collects CMÖ-s (The three letters indicate Gypsy – Cigány, Free- Mentes, Area – Övezet). He takes photos and places them on the map, so that everyone knows where we may find these stains of shame and racism in the city. Omara’s artwork If I could start over, formulated with the blue color of remembering and floating forms, is an intimate constellation about the desire for a second chance. The mixed media installation of Jenő André Raatzsch – Manifesto for the Occasion of Roma Artists’ Arrival to Hungary – analyzes the position of Roma artists in Hungary and in the universe. The woman author: angela invites the audience for her participatory concept art project Dear Mr. Soros to aim at releasing repressed communications and messages which belong to this greatest donor of Roma initiatives in the region. The exhibition will be opened by Erika Lakatos’s Golden Flag Ritual on April 8, 2013 on International Roma Day.