Delaine Le Bas: Romani Embassy
Signs of national sovereignty. Places of immunity and inviolability. Symbolic territories of cultural exchange and economic ties. Platforms for negotiation and dialogue. Primary channels of communication — but above all: a piece of homeland offering protection to its citizens. What are embassies for? And who do they represent?
Romani Embassy is an ongoing installation and performance by Delaine Le Bas, first conceived in 2015 and continuing to the present day. It is a cardboard sign made on the move, a living embodiment of the struggles facing the global Roma community.
Romani Embassy responds to the deepening indifference across Europe toward the Roma and Travellers.
The everyday exclusions, the institutional racism, the segregation that persist, even as the hollow rhetoric of diversity and inclusion continues to exclude the very communities it claims to uplift. As an artwork and artistic intervention, Romani Embassy was inspired by the Aboriginal Embassy, one of the most significant indigenous political demonstrations of the twentieth century.
From the first day of the Aboriginal Embassy, 27 January 1972, Billy Craigie, Burt Williams, Michael Anderson, and Tony Corey stood with a beach umbrella and hand-painted signs outside the Parliament House in Canberra. The Aboriginal Embassy was part of a long history of political consciousness growing since the 1920s. It was a highly political, physically confronting, but also deeply intellectual movement, which through practical steps aimed to transform institutions at the most local level.
There are no embassies for the disenfranchised, for those who slip between the cracks, for those escaping war zones. The Romani Embassy is for all of those who have nowhere to turn for help — and there are many. Societal inequalities are growing, and the divide between the haves and have nots widens with every passing day. Governments and institutions across the globe must confront their role in the continued exclusion of marginalised communities.
From London to Čarna Gora, from Venice to Skopje, for over a decade, Delaine Le Bas has taught resistance in her subtle but persistent way of performative protest to Roma, who do not have a nation-state.
A glance, a walk, a simple gesture, a modest but firm posture. Romani Embassy is a silent call, a cardboard sign hung on a piece of string, a poster, a call to action to make a difference for all those who have nowhere to run to for safety, for basic care, for the human rights that every person on this planet deserves.
ERIAC is pleased to present a retrospective solo exhibition of Delaine Le Bas, marking the year of her nomination for the Turner Prize.
The exhibition is part of JEKHIPE: “Reclaiming Our Past, Rebuilding Our Future — New Approaches to Fighting Antigypsyism”, financed by the European Commission within the framework of the CERV Programme. The retrospective show, with original works from as early as 2015 and newly commissioned pieces opened on December 5 in the frame of the Roma Art of Assembly, the General Assembly of ERIAC members.
_______________
Delaine Le Bas is a British artist born in 1965. Her work addresses nationhood, land, belonging and gender across diverse media including embroidery, painting, decoupage, sculpture, installations and performance that reflect domestic claustrophobia and the transient nature of modern materiality. Le Bas is shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2024 and her installation work is part of the on-going exhibition ‘Turner Prize 2024’ at Tate Britain, which runs until 16 February 2025. Her acclaimed solo exhibition ‘Incipit Vita Nova. Here Begins The New Life/A New Life Is Beginning’ is the basis for the nomination for the Turner Prize 2024.
In June 2007, her work was included in the first Roma Pavilion at 52nd Venice Biennale and the Prague Biennale. She has continued participating in international events, including the 11th Berlin Biennale (2020), Harbstsalon, Maxim Gorki Theatre, Berlin (2019, 2017), Roma Pavillion at 58th Venice Biennale (2019), ANTI Athens Biennale, Athens (2018), 9th Gwangju Biennale (2011), National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare (2014), Framer Framed, Amsterdam (2015), and a number of UK venues including solo exhibitions at Transmission, Glasgow (2018), Bolton Museum and Art Gallery, Bolton (2014), Phoenix, Brighton (2014), Chapter, Cardiff (2010), Transition, London (2005). ‘St Sara Kali George’, Worthing Museum and Art Gallery (2021), ‘Beware of Linguistic Engineering’, Maxim Gorki Theater (2022). She created a commissioned work for a group exhibition ‘Radical Landscapes’ for Tate Liverpool (2021). Le Bas curated ‘House of Le Bas’(2023) an exhibition overviewing the history of practice of herself and her late artist husband Damian Le Bas for Whitechapel Gallery in London.
Delaine Le Bas is represented by Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix, London
_______________
Leave a Reply