Małgorzata Mirga-Tas

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas (Polish pronunciation: ; born 1978) is a Polish-Romani artist, sculptor, painter, activist, feminist and educator, the winner of the Paszport Polityki Polish art award. In 2022 Mirga-Tas represented Poland at the 59th Venice Biennale as part of the "Milk of Dreams" exhibition, where she was the first Romani artist to represent any country at this art event.

Biography Mirga-Tas was born in 1978 in Zakopane, Poland. She is a member of the Bergitka Roma. She graduated from the Academy of Arts in Krakow in 2004. Mirga-Tas lives and works in Czarna Góra, a Romani village at the foot of the Tatra Mountains.

In her early works, she described the transition in the 1960s and 1970s of the Romani people from a nomadic life to a permanent settlement in villages and cities. Her exhibition "Out of Egypt" (2021) at the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok is about the life of the Romani people in the 17th century, a nomadic life before settling in permanent settlements. The solo exhibition was entitled "Re-Enchanting the World".

The installation consisted of twelve large-format, three-part fabrics referring to the famous "calendar" cycle of frescoes from Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara. Paintings depicting the Olympian gods, zodiac signs and scenes from the life of the court in Ferrara, which are fundamental to European art history, were used by the artist to talk about the specific Polish-Roma identity. The artist prepared reinterpretations of these images and motifs by including elements of Polish-Roma culture and "disenchanting" stereotypical narratives about the Roma.

The work of Małgorzata Mirga-Tas was an attempt to expand the Polish and European iconosphere and art history to include representations of Roma culture. The artist created a world constantly subjected to "conversion", which became a kind of shelter offering hope and respite for the recipients.

Most of the materials and textiles used by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas come from people the artist knows and sometimes portrays in her works. The work also used clothes from second-hand stores, which - as the artist noted - were probably produced in India or China and then came to Poland. Upcycling these fabrics and using found objects such as playing cards, pins and earrings adds another layer to the work.

In addition to the exhibition, a catalog was created in Polish and English. It included texts by the curators and essays by invited writers - Ali Smith and Damian Le Bas, scholar Ethel Brooks, as well as poems by Teresa Mirga and Jan Mirga.

In 2023 she presented a solo exhibition at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Poland. She presented another solo exhibition at the Brücke Museum in Berlin, Germany.