OMARA: “You Let me Play” Exhibition Opening on April 6, Leading Up to International Roma Day

Exhibition Opening: OMARA, “You Let Me Play” (International Roma Day Celebration)

 

Opening: 6 April 2023, 18.00

Location: ERIAC Art Space (European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture), Reinhardtstr. 41-43, 10117 Berlin

 

“I think I am a painter because I can present everything I live through in my life: the way my people are treated, politics, my private life, small things, great things, humiliations, joy and grief, death, family, my identity”

(quotation from the artist, adapted to English by the curators)

 

After the successful presentation at documenta fifteen, RomaMoMa invites audiences for a monographic exhibition of OMARA. RomaMoMA is a contemporary art project initiating a forum for collaborative reflection on a future Roma Museum of Contemporary Art, with the involvement of local and international, Roma and non-Roma artists, cultural experts, social scientists, and the civil sphere. RomaMoMA is a joint initiative of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) and OFF-Biennale Budapest. In the imagined RomaMoMA Museum, Omara takes the central position: She was one of the most influential and internationally acknowledged Roma woman artists, with radical, political and feminist expression. She painted episodes from her personal life, including her childhood memories, family life, motherhood, traumas due to discrimination, and violence, the political environment and daily events from Hungary. Her works are symbolic visualizations, and rituals of revolt against pervasive oppression. She was more than a painter or visual artist, often active as a political activist, a performer, and a media personality. Her art born out of her subjectivity authentically represents the general Roma interest, challenging norms and conformity, and addressing the system which created oppressive rules.

The artist passed away in 2020 at the age of 75, leaving behind an exceptional oeuvre. Her first monographic exhibition in Berlin opens in a series of ERIAC celebrations of International Roma Day.

The exhibition is on view until May 12, 2023. We receive visitors Monday-Friday 9.00-17.00 (no appointment necessary)

Curators: ERIAC & Peter Bencze with collaboration: ERIAC, Everybody Needs Art, KuglerArt Gallery

 

Omara: Even the mentally ill aunt was not left at home

2006-2009, oil on wood, 37×60 cm

Courtesy of Everybody Needs Art and Longtermhandstand, Budapest

Image courtesy of Peter Bencze