Paradise Lost, The First Roma Pavilion
52. INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION
LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA
Open to the Public: 10th June-21st November 2007
Tuesday-Sunday: 10.00AM 6.00PM Press Conference: Thursday, 7th June, 3.00PM
Venue: Palazzo Pisani S. Marina (Piano Nobile)
Calle delle Erbe, Cannaregio 6103, Venezia
Curator: Tímea Junghaus, art historian, curator [H]
Scientific Committee: Viktor Misiano, art historian, international curator and critic [I RU] Thomas Acton, Professor of Romani Studies, University of Greenwich [GB] Barnabás Bencsik, curator, Director of ACAX | Agency for Contemporary Art Exchange [H] Dragan Klaic, theater scholar and cultural analyst [NL] Marketta Seppala, Director of Frame Foundation, Commissioner of the Nordic Pavilion 2007 [FI] Katalin Székely<, art historian, art critic [H]
List of Exhibitors: Daniel Baker [GB], Tibor Balogh [H], Mihaela Ionela Cimpeanu [RO], Gabi Jimenez [F], András Kállai [H - GB], Damian Le Bas [GB], Delaine Le Bas [GB], Kiba Lumberg [FI], Omara [H], Marian Petre [RO], Nihad Nino Pusija [BO - D], Jeno André Raatzsch [H - D], Dusan Ristic [SRB - USA], István Szentandrássy [H], Norbert Szirmai János Révész [H]
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 for Europe since 19th century modernism, have we all lost our search for Paradise?
The First Roma Pavilion at the 52nd International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia 2007 is commissioned and sponsored by the Open Society Institute and is supported by the European Cultural Foundation and the Allianz Kulturstiftung.
