Malgorzata Mirga-Tas: Re-enchanting the world, Poland Pavilion

For the first time in the over-120-year history of the Venice Biennale, a Roma artist, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, is representing a national pavilion. Her project, Re-enchanting the World, is prepared specifically for the Poland Pavilion. The exhibition is curated by Wojciech Szymański and Joanna Warsza and consists of twelve large-format textile installations which allude to the “Hall of the Months” fresco series from the Renaissance Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara. The artist challenges stereotypes and presents an insightful, unprejudiced picture of the Roma community by literally, as she puts it, “throwing the material into the picture,” using pieces of the wardrobe of the subjects portrayed. In her large-format collages, fragments of skirts, scarves and shirts, become carriers of a charged history. Re-enchanting the World proposes a new narrative of the cultural migration of images and mutual influences between Roma, Polish and European cultures by inserting representations of Polish–Roma culture into key motifs in European art history.