This exhibition is the first major museum presentation in the United States of the acclaimed Polish Romani artist Małgorzata Mirga-Tas. The artist, like many in her community, is a descendent of Holocaust survivors. Now a leading figure in the contemporary global art scene, she counters longstanding stereotypes, legacies of trauma, and historical erasure by building a positive iconography of Romani people through monumental textile collages, sculptures, and installations. Much of her work is sewn from colorful recycled clothing and materials sourced from her community, imbuing her portraits with a powerful talismanic quality. The images in this exhibition, representing Romani people across generations and national borders, provide an optimistic vision of Romani life while demonstrating the parallel and often intersecting experiences of Romani and Jewish communities before, during, and after World War II.
Małgorzata Mirga-Tas features artworks that memorialize and dignify victims and survivors of the Romani Holocaust, including such celebrated figures as the artist Ceija Stojka and the heroic Alfreda Noncia Markowska. It also debuts new work inspired by the history and experience of American Roma. A final chapter expands on the German Jewish art historian Aby Warburg’s pioneering study of iconology. Inspired by Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas (1924–29), Mirga-Tas has created her own cosmology of art historical images of Romani people from their arrival in Europe in the 1400s to today. Surrounded by her textiles reinterpreting key historical works, the presentation embeds a profound sense of joy, agency, and a right to self-determination in the popular imagination of Romani life.
Małgorzata Mirga-Tas is organized at the Jewish Museum by Rebecca Shaykin, Barnett and Annalee Newman Curator of Contemporary Art, working in collaboration with the artist.
The Jewish Museum