Exhibitions
04 Sep 16 Oct 2020
FUTUROMA
Celia Baker, Ján Berky, Marcus-Gunnar Pettersson, Ödön Gyügyi, Billy Kerry, Klára Lakatos, Delaine Le Bas, Valérie Leray, Emília Rigová, Markéta Šestáková, Selma Selman, Dan Turner, Alfred Ullrich, László Varga
curated by Daniel Baker
You and your friends are cordially invited to the opening of the exhibition.
Soft opening in the garden on Friday, 04 September, 5 - 9 pm
6.30 pm
Welcome
Angelika Stepken, Villa Romana
Greeting
Tommaso Sacchi, Cultural Assessor of the City of Florence
Introduction
Timea Junghaus, Director ERIAC (European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture)
Daniel Baker, Curator
Limited number of visitors to the exhibition with mask and according to the distance regulations.
Opening hours: Tuesday to Friday 2 to 6 pm and on appointment
Selma Selman, Untitled, 2014, acrylic paint on metal, Self-portrait (washing machine), photo Tanja Kanazir, 2016, Billy Kerry,
Dark Origin, 2008, ceramic, Valérie Leray, Castel 'de la Pierre' Coudrecieux (Internment Camp for Gypsies 1940 - 1946, France),
2006, photograph, Gyügyi Ödön, Zöld Alma (Green Apples), 2000, mixed media on paper
Dan Turner, Seeds of Change, 2019, british wildflowers, glass cubes
Ján Berky, Khatar avlam the kaj dzavas? (Where we came from and where we are going?), 1997, collage on paper
Marcus-Gunnar Pettersson, Flower Studies A & B, 2015, pencil, pen and watercolour on paper, Billy Kerry, Miniature 1, 2018, ceramic
Delaine Le Bas, Romani Embassy, 2019, performance and related artefacts, Romani Embassy, 2017, photo Damian Le Bas
Celia Baker, Wool work, 2006 /2009, knitted textile installation
photos: OKNOstudio
FUTUROMA draws upon aspects of Afrofuturism to explore Roma contemporary art's role in defining, reflecting and influencing Roma culture. The exhibition offers new and spontaneous re-interpretations of Roma past, present and futures via a fusion of the traditional and the futuristic in order to critique the current situation for Roma people and to re-examine historical events. Imagining Roma bodies in speculative futures offers a counter narrative to the reductive ways that Roma culture has been understood and constructed—thereby moving our cultural expression beyond the restrictive motifs of oppression toward a radical and progressive vision of Roma to come.
The confluence of traditional knowledge and contemporary art practice evident within FUTUROMA combine to highlight possibilities for different ways of being. Here artworks are rooted in the techniques and traditions of the Roma diaspora, but at the same time decisively forward-looking. The acts of remembering and imagining manifest within these artworks point toward ambitious visions of life affirming futures and at the same time allow reinterpretation our collective past.
In their unique manner each of the artworks on display in FUTUROMA variously employ and deconstruct different aspects of the primeval, the everyday and the futuristic. These objects move between the familiar and the unexpected taking us beyond the confines of time and place to a different kind of objectivity — to a place to see anew. New site-specific works emphasize the implications of materiality — physical stuff that takes up space in the world. After all, it is the Roma's physical presence that is continually contested, marked by questions of where and how we are permitted to exist.
As well as being a means to re-discover Roma history in an impactful and engaging way the project is a chance to envision a future where Roma truly belong. Daniel Baker, the curator, writes that, "As Roma we are too often told that we have no future — that we remain relics of the past. FUTUROMA draws together visions of our future to present an alternative perspective informed by all that came before and the promise of all that can be, placing us firmly in the here and now."
in cooperation with