"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.

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?

Paradise Lost. The First Roma Pavillon at the Biennale di Venezia 2007. 176 Seiten. 140 farbige Abbildungen. Broschiert. Sprache: Englisch. Format: 300 x 240 mm. Prestel Verlag 2007. ISBN 978-3-7913-3914-6.

Projektdauer: 10. Juni - 21. November 2007

Projektort: Palazzo Pisani, Venedig

Projektpartner: Open Society Institute Budapest/Brüssel, European Cultural Foundation Amsterdam. Kuratorin: Tímea Junghaus (Budapest)