RomaMoMa – The Digital Roma Museum

The exhibition Art and Healing – A Roma Contribution for Europe, on view at Schafhof – European Center for Art Upper Bavaria until 26 September, featured the nomadic RomaMoMA Library and works by Valérie Leray (F), Selma Selman (BIH), Dan Turner (UK), and Alfred Ullrich (D). Following our post on the RomaMoMA Library display at Schafhof and the text by Dan Turner, Alfred Ullrich enters the RomaMoMA blog with a very personal testimony combining words and images.

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As a freelance artist, I was particularly pleased to participate in the exhibition Art and Healing – A Roma Contribution for Europe, at the Schafhof Europäisches Künstlerhaus Oberbayern, together with Valérie Leray, Selma Selman and Dan Turner. This selection, in particular, reflected specific aspects of the respective European regions from which the artists come. Since I live in Upper Bavaria myself, I find it important to consciously manifest the public artistic reflection of my origin in my everyday environment. Especially since I hold exhibitions and workshops in social spaces – among them, so-called non-Roma institutions and galleries – it goes without saying that I bring Sinti and Roma contexts into the general art scene. Even just a few years ago, this still provoked astonishment in society; gradually, however, through my continuous exhibition activity, it has become an accustomed factor, also among my art colleagues. Having grown up in an illiterate environment, it is much easier for me to use visual associative forms of expression. The following appendix reflects aspects of my artistic work: 

 

[1] WO MEIN HUT HÄNGT Zuhause zwischen den Kulturen

WHERE MY HAT HANGS Home between Cultures 

Neue Galerie Dachau 

4 May to 22 July 2018

Author: Jutta Mannes 

https://dachauer-galerien-museen.de › wo-mein-hut-hae… 

[2] Außenseiter unter Außenseiter: inn 

Outsider among Outsiders Nachrichten und Beiträge aus dem Rom e. V.en 

News and items of the Rom e. V.en 

Interview with Alfred Ullrich by Thorsten Fehlberg, pp. 51-53 

[3] The WUK, Kunsthalle, Vienna, Exnergasse, 2013 

To One’s Name: The name Roma as agency 

Curator: Suzana Milevska; 

Curational assistance: Patrick Kwaśniewski; 

Participants: Saša Barbul, Marika Schmiedt, Alfred Ullrich, Pedro Aguilera Cortés, Eduard Freudmann, and others

Design: Carlos Toledo, Eva Dertschei 

[4] CONTENTIOUS OBJECTS/ASHAMED SUBJECTS, edited by Suzana Milevska

Exhibition catalogue: www.traces.polimi.it/download-area 

p. 78. On the Move Alfred Ullrich

[5] You Tube Vernissage: ART AND HEALING – A Roma Contribution for Europe, 

live transmission on 24 July 2021 

Schafhof: Europäisches Künstlerhaus Oberbayern 

Schafhof – European Center for Art Upper Bavaria 

www.schafhof-kuenstlerhaus.de 

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My contribution to the Art and Healing exhibition was entitled Barking Curtain. At my exhibition entitled Gadschi, Roma, Sinti, Manouches … in 2011 at the gallery of the Artists’ Association Dachau, I participated with a similar work: instead of a curtain, aesthetically coloured etchings hung on the wall. Especially elderly visitors, attracted by the beautiful prints, reacted in an extremely frightened way to the barking that was emitted. At the time, I thought about enlisting the help of paramedics for the duration of the exhibition.

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Translated from the German by Agata Gontarczyk.

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