Roma Pavilion / 52nd Venice Biennale 2007
The Allianz Kulturstiftung is supporting the first transnational pavilion with 16 Roma artists from seven countries at the 52nd Venice Biennale. The exhibition entitled "Paradise Lost" is an initiative of the Open Society Institute and presents for the first time a broad spectrum of contemporary artistic styles and art forms from various communities in Europe's biggest ethnic minority.
Paradise Lost - The First Roma Pavilion
"Paradise Lost" is the first contemporary show representing an international selection of Roma contemporary artists. The exhibition showcases the visual art talents of the largest European ethnic minority. The artists embrace and transform, deny and deconstruct, oppose and analyze, challenge and overwrite the existing stereotypes in a confident intellectual manner, reinventing the Roma tradition and its elements as contemporary culture. The archetypical motives provide a firm underlying sentiment, but the result unexpectedly suggests a new interpretation, one that is created by the Roma artists themselves.
Daniel Baker: "No travellers"
The envisioned alternative identity highlights the strengths of Roma, the capacity for fusion, the sense of glamour, humor and irony, adaptability, mobility and transnationalism. The intention of opposing and denying the existing (mis)representations and promoting the contrary carry an irresolvable dichotomy, which embodies in art unfree from sorrowful beauty, paranoia, schizophrenia, and post traumatic syndromes. If the terra incognita of exotic gypsies has been the target of escape since 19th century modernism for Europe, have we all lost our search for Paradise?
Tímea Junghaus (Curator)
KAIROS 2008 goes to Tímea Junghaus
On February, 10th, the European Culture Prize will be handed to Junghaus in the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg. The prize of the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S. honors the special, personal dedication of Tímea Junghaus for the public respect and consciousness of the influence of Roma Culture in Europe.
Catalogue "Paradise Lost"
The Catalogue for the Exhibition
Paradise Lost. The First Roma Pavillon at the Biennale di Venezia 2007. 176 pages. 140 coloured images. Brochure. Language: English. Format: 300 x 240 mm. Prestel Verlag 2007. ISBN 978-3-7913-3914-6.
Daniel Baker: Cock and flower looking glass
Project framework: June 10 - November 21, 2007
Project venue: Palazzo Pisani, Venice
Project partner: Open Society Institute Budapest / Brussels, European Cultural Foundation Amsterdam, Curator: Tímea Junghaus (Budapest)
