Weaving the daily life of a people: Małgorzata Mirga-Tas’s artistic patchworks at Collezione Maramotti

«We want to be visible, we are human beings». These are the six words, translated into Italian from reasoning in English, that tell the story of this exhibition better than any other concept. Collezione Maramotti hosts a site-specific project by the Roma artist with Polish passport Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, already seen and appreciated in Italy in 2022 at the Venice Art Biennale, in Poland’s national pavilion. We have defined the project as site-specific because it also stems from the artist’s dialogue with the Sinti community of Reggio Emilia. This is a vast community that comprises about half of the entire Roma and Sinti population in all Emilia-Romagna and which the artist wanted to meet «conversing, seeing many of their photographs, observing the clothes, learning about the customs».

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, “The Big Dipper Will Foretell the Future of the Roma” (dettaglio), 2025, patchwork tessile, acrilico, tecnica mista, © Małgorzata Mirga-Tas. Ph. Marcin Tas, courtesy of the artist, Foksal Gallery Foundation (Warsaw), Frith Street Gallery (London) and Karma International (Zurich)

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, “The Big Dipper Will Foretell the Future of the Roma” (detail), 2025, textile patchwork, acrylic, mixed media, © Małgorzata Mirga-Tas. Ph. Marcin Tas, courtesy of the artist, Foksal Gallery Foundation (Warsaw), Frith Street Gallery (London) and Karma International (Zurich)

The Big Dipper Will Foretell the Future of The Roma is a multi-installation that has as its gravitational center a large artistic carousel. Moreover, historically, the Sinti have exercised the profession of carousel operators and, therefore, the starting point could only be this giant hexagonal textile patchwork that tells the present by interweaving the history, faces and colors of this people. To best enjoy the carousel, one must perhaps start from the replica of the 1422 inscription that in Bologna, precisely at Porta Galliera, evokes the arrival of this population in the retinue of a ‘Ducha d’Egitto’ that connects to the words Gypsies (English) and Gitanos (Spanish), born from the belief that this people came from Egypt, while it is historically established that they arrived from the distant Indian peninsula. In the middle of this inscription there are many horses, sacred animals for these peoples, and below is embedded the contemporary Reggio scene of a couple dancing under the gaze of two other women leaning against a car. «I met many women – states the artist – and they seemed much more progressive than their men».

Dance, horses, freedom, the automobile that has replaced the wagon, everything evokes travel, the true cultural DNA of the Roma, Sinti, Kale, Manouches and Romanichals ethnicities (in Ireland, for example, there are called “the Travellers”), that is, the groups that compose the Romani constellation. Continuing counterclockwise, we encounter, always embedded among dancing horses, a homage to the verses of the Roma and Polish poet Bronisława Wajs, better known as Papusza. The letters are embroidered on the fabric and these are lyrics that exalt times past, lost youth, the passing of time and above all the observation of the sky and nature which, father and mother of all, will guide, thanks to the Big Dipper, the future history of the Roma people. In the carousel section that would correspond to the rotating horses, Mirga-Tas depicts a man and two joyful women in front of their carousel, and also a couple with child in front of the caravan, again women with children, a domestic interior scene, and women who have their gaze directed toward us, like subjects posing for a photograph. These are real people who now find themselves at the center of an exhibition hall and a very engaging artistic project. As real are the earrings worn by the figures, real is the shirt collar with real buttons and the fabric of the clothes is truly the textile worn by them.

Everything is woven and Mirga-Tas gives a second life to scraps of fabric, tablecloths and used curtains: the stitching is exposed and, approaching the carousel, one is astonished by the impressive detail work created by the artist. From a distance of a few meters, instead, the effect is that of listening to the stories, the traumas of a community that has been the object of persecutions (the Roma were also the object of extermination by the Nazis and they remember the period with a day, August 2nd, and a specific term, porrajmos, that is, the great devouring).

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, “The Big Dipper Will Foretell the Future of the Roma”, 2025, exhibition view at Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, courtesy of the artist, Foksal Gallery Foundation (Warsaw), Frith Street Gallery (London) and Karma International (Zurich)

Continuing in the hall, one encounters three free wooden horses that ideally accompany us in the direction of the other installation: Familiakro dzivipen (Family life, 2025). In the context of a flat landscape surrounded by high mountains, a man is in front of his wagon, while a girl, brightly dressed, approaches him. The figures seem real, because real is the situation of a people, that of the localities of Rivalta, Roncocesi, Roncina, Cavazzoli and Pratofontana, who have inhabited Italy for centuries, yet are not considered Italian. The artistic message of Małgorzata Mirga-Tas thus becomes an anthropological approach that transcends art to dress it in a social fabric.

Info:

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas. The Big Dipper Will Foretell the Future of the Roma
12/10/2025 – 8/02/2026
Collezione Maramotti
Via Fratelli Cervi, 66, Reggio Emilia
www.collezionemaramotti.org

Giovanni Crotti

I am Giovanni Crotti, born in 1968, and I feel obliged to thank writing because it drives my life. I cultivate within me multitudes that lead me to investigate, know, and deepen every cultural and creative expression, and then write about it, always trying to be clear and documented in the contents.

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