Małgorzata Mirga-Tas: Suno Mangie Dzialas

Göteborgs Konsthall is proud to present the exhibition Suno Mangie Dzialas / I Have a Dream, with the Polish-Roma artist Małgorzata Mirga-Tas. In textile works and paintings, Mirga-Tas seeks to counteract antiziganist stereotypes and presents a personal image of Roma life from a feminist minority perspective.

Mirga-Tas’s colourful visual narratives integrate references to art history, personal observations, Roma activism and historical symbols that imbue Roma identity, history and community with power and a sense of pride.

Her monumental textile works are made from clothes given to her by friends and family or found in second-hand stores near her home in the village of Czarna Gòra on the Polish side of the Tatra mountains. They feature scenes from Roma everyday life, where the artist’s mother, siblings, cousins and friends are tenderly portrayed in great detail. Consistently in her works, Mirga-Tas presents women’s lives, strong female role models and Roma activists, highlighting their importance in the private and public spheres.

A centrepiece in the exhibition is a series of new textile collages showing scenes from Swedish-Roma experience. These works mix everyday situations with portraits of prominent female Swedish-Roma activists, including Singoalla Millon, Diana Nyman and Rosa Taikon, who have been instrumental in the struggle for Roma rights in Sweden. A dialogue is created, linking Roma activism across national borders and uniting a people who have lived divided and nomadic in Europe for centuries.

Suno Mangie Dzialas means “I have a dream” in Romani. It refers to Martin Luther King’s famous speech in 1963. The title is a powerful comment on the dreams and hopes that encompass everyday love, friendship and the importance of fellowship between all human beings, but also on the political struggles and the dream of a society free from repression, discrimination and inequality.

About
Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, born 1978, is a Polish-Romani artist, educator and activist. Mirga-Tas lives and works in Czarna Góra in Spisz in Poland. She graduated from the Faculty of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow (2004). Since 2011 she has been organizing the international artistic residency program Jaw Dikh! in Czarna Góra, intended for Roma and non-Roma artists. In 2022 Mirga-Tas presented the acclaimed exhibition Re-enchanting the World in the Polish Pavilion of the Venice Biennale, and her works have been shown at several solo and group exhibitions, including the 11th Berlin Biennale (2020), the Moravian Gallery in Brno (2017), the Center of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko (2020), Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2020), at the Art Encounters Biennale in Timişoara (2019), Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum – Kulturen der Welt in Cologne. Mirga-Tas has received the Polityka’s Passport for best artist from Poland in 2020 and the Maria Anto and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven Art Prize for a Young Polish Artist (2021) counteracting exclusion, racial discrimination, and xenophobia.

The exhibition is presented with the support of the Polish Institute in Stockholm.

For press inquiries, please contact: pnina.molin@kultur.goteborg.se / T +46 31 3683164