Paradise lost, reality revealed

ARTWALK

The Roma, or "gypsies", are amongst the most brutalised, systematically marginalised populations in Central and East Europe today.

Cher tells you that when she plaintively sings "Gypsies, tramps and thieves", laying bare biases. If a pop singer won't do, consider history. Hitler, who lost no opportunity to annihilate diversity, treated them as impurities in his terrifying quest for purity.

Indians might find this widespread distaste surprising, given we claim the Roma as one of our own, an arm of Indians who wandered off. Inefficient paperwork caused India to lose its chance this year at Venice.

But as self-anointed kinsmen of the Roma, we've still got reason to cheer because they have responded to the stereotyping in a special pavilion of their own, at the prestigious ongoing Venice Biennale 2007. This is the exhibition Paradise Lost, with 15 participants.

Using art to precipitate fresh flows of ideas is not new, but it takes social and political buoyancy to be able to do this at all.

Showing at one of the world's most prestigious events, at this scale, necessitates mainstream institutional endorsement, which of course means that Roma Art is being recognised as contemporary and mainstream in its own right, speaking the same sophisticated language as the rest of the chi-chi art world. And if you are at Venice, how much of an interloper can they call you in wider society?

Roma artists have shown contemporary works before, but this is their most ambitious attempt. Mostly, their art was condescendingly treated as naïve art, some kind of folksy stuff, feeding the souvenir hunter rather than connoisseur.

Sometimes, they were reduced to romanticised exotica, creatures rather than people. The Biennale theme, Paradise Lost, alludes to getting rid of this burden and casting away an idyllic identity that never existed. It has enabled the Roma to refashion their image, breaking out of the periphery and elbowing out imposed identities. We're seeing how art is democratised and how it, in turn, pushes associated values.

Not allowing their art to be compared to other European artists' work was one way of keeping the Roma out of the mainstream. Gabi Jimenez, 43 and born in France, offers a retort. His paintings, depicting gypsy life, uses the visual vocabulary of proud European classics. Works like "Caravans and the Cypresses" quote Van Gogh, and other works hint at Cezanne and precious stained glass.

Joining this project of looking everyone in the eye is Delaine Le Bas, from England. Her extraordinary work draws from second-hand materials, cheaply sold. Investing them with new ideas is reclaiming them.

For that reason, the material foundation of her art works as a metaphor for the larger project of the Roma. She consciously deploys embroidery, sequins and collage to build pictures buzzing with activity. Peer and you'll see darker necrosis, an allusion to the forced Roma romanticisation, particularly in her work with dolls and images of young girls.

Kiba Lumberg, Finnish and of Roma origin before she wandered off seeking global citizenship, broadens the debate with her work on heavy skirts, the kind of traditional clothing that "imprisoned" women, freezing their place in social hierarchy. Her works interrogate Roma-ness and belonging.

At first glance, you might wonder why so many artists belong to the developed world "" France, Finland, England. But as the curator of the pavilion, Timea Junghaus, points out, the Roma have never been presented in any European pavilion in the last 112 years of the Biennale, regardless of where they lived.

A separate, multi-national pavilion is hardly an excess. Equally importantly, it poses the larger question of organising art shows via national pavilions in the era of global migration and globalisation.

Art reflects the world of ideas and experiences. The Roma presence optimistically suggests who we'd like to be as a world at large.