Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, z cyklu Wyjście z Egiptu / Out of Egypt, from the series Out of Egypt, 2021. © Małgorzata Mirga-Tas. Courtesy of the artist, Frith Street Gallery, London, Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw and Karma International, Zurich. Photo: Marek Gardulski.
This autumn, Tate St Ives presents the first major UK exhibition of Małgorzata Mirga-Tas. Born in Zakopane in Poland, Mirga-Tas grew up in a Romani community in Czarna Góra, at the foot of the Tatra Mountains, where she continues to live and work today. Her visual storytelling is informed by a feminist perspective and a sustained engagement with her community, challenging stereotypical representations of Roma people. The artist is best known for creating colourful textile collages made with materials and fabrics gathered from family and friends. Over 25 works have been brought together at Tate St Ives, including six new works on display for the first time.
Mirga-Tas brings attention to the everyday life of her community – their relationships, alliances, and shared activities – by depicting those closest to her, including family members, collaborators, fellow artists and activists. Often working together with other women, she creates patchworks from materials including curtains, jewellery, handkerchiefs, shirts, and sheets, which are sewn together to form what she calls 'microcarriers of history’. She also re-imagines artworks from across the centuries that have presented Roma identity in negative ways and transforms them into vibrant images imbued with strength and dignity. The works combine realism with the building of a visual dictionary of Romani culture, alongside scenes which present figures and animals in an abstracted space. The artist has also looked back to specific historical moments, including creating works commemorating victims of Romani genocide during the Second World War.
Mirga-Tas was the first artist of Romani heritage to have her works enter Tate’s collection, and all three of those works are on show in the exhibition. They include Sewn with Threads 2019 and My Mother 2019, part of a wider 10-part series ‘Roma Madonna’ (2016–2020), depicting scenes from the everyday life of Roma women in Poland. Both works consist of freestanding, folding wooden screens, with three double-sided fabric panels, made from vivid patchworks painted with acrylic. The Three Graces 2021 is on show for the first time since being acquired by Tate. The work is based on a photograph taken in the 1980s by the artist’s uncle Andrzej Mirga, the only Roma ethnographer in Poland at that time.
These are joined by six of her 2022 portrait series Siukar Manusia (meaning great or wonderful people), which depict first-generation Romani inhabitants of the Nowa Huta district in eastern Kraków, ranging from concentration camp survivors and activists to eminent musicians, created using found and donated textiles. Tate’s show also includes a work from Mirga-Tas’ 2021 Out of Egypt series, originally presented as a series of six at the Arsenal Gallery in Bialystok. In these works, the artist takes inspiration from a series of early-17th-century etchings to create her own large-scale embroidered renderings of the same scenes created with objects and textiles used or worn by members of her community.
The exhibition also includes one of the monumental fabric panels Mirga-Tas created for the 59th Venice Biennale, where she was the first Romani artist ever selected to represent a country with her series Re-enchanting the World. June 2022 is one of 12 panels she created for the Polish Pavilion, each representing a month of the year and taking their inspiration from a cycle of frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara. It is joined at Tate St Ives by several other recent bodies of work, as well as six newly created works which will be on show for the very first time.
