Until July 23, the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw hosts the exhibition "Enchanting the World," which also features a work from the MGW collection – "May" by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas.
Małgorzata Mirga-Tas is a Polish-Roma visual artist, painter, sculptor, educator, and activist. She graduated from the A. Kenar Secondary School of Fine Arts in Zakopane. In 2004, she received her diploma from the Faculty of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. She lives and works in Czarna Góra, where she was raised in a Roma community. She is involved in social projects that combat exclusion, racial discrimination, and xenophobia. She is the founder of the Romani Art movement and the originator of the international artist-in-residence program "Jaw Dikh!". In 2020, she received the Polityka Passport in the "Visual Arts" category. Her most notable works include "Exodus from Egypt," "Wesiune thana/A Place in the Forest," and "29th Ceroplastic Exercises," which were very well received by art critics.
In 2022, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas presented the large-scale installation "Enchanting the World" in the Polish Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale. The textile "May" is one of 12 parts of this monumental series. It features portraits of Cejla Stojka, a Roma activist, painter, and singer who survived Auschwitz, and Krystyna Gil, a survivor of the Roma massacre in Szczurowa. The work prompts reflection on the possibility of processing Holocaust trauma in art and the issue of postmemory among the second and third generations of survivors.
The exhibition "Enchanting the World" will be open at Zachęta in Warsaw until July 23.
