Małgorzata Mirga-Tas in conversation with Sophie Goltz

Name: Crossing #1 – (The High Priestess)
Start: 2022-07-21T19:00:00+02:00
End: 2022-07-21T21:00:00+02:00
Location: Kunst im Traklhaus, Waagplatz 1a, 5020 Salzburg

Crossing #1 - (The High Priestess)

21 July 2022 / 7–9 pm CEST

Kunst im Traklhaus, Waagplatz 1a, 5020 Salzburg

Credits:
(1) Ina Linkewicz
(2) Seah Sze Yunn

Art and Activism as an Inseparable Tool for Storytelling

Artist Małgorzata Mirga-Tas in conversation with Sophie Goltz (Director of International Summer Academy, Salzburg)

The Polish-Romani artist Małgorzata Mirga-Tas will introduce her artistic work and her participation in Romani activism. For her, art and activism are inseparable. Both merge in her practice, which addresses anti-Romani stereotypes while building an affirmative iconography of Roma communities. As a feminist, Mirga-Tas tells stories without shouting, even if they are attached to the fight against racial, class and economic prejudice. She mainly shows women in their everyday life: their relationships, alliances, and shared activities. In her textile collages, the depicted costumes of the communities refer to a set of intertwined micro- and macro-histories of displaced bodies within the fortress Europe.

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas is a Polish-Romani artist and activist. She deals with anti-ziganist stereotypes and works to build an affirmative and situated iconography of a Roma community from a perspective of a feminism of minority. She graduated from the Faculty of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków (2004). Her works have been shown in several dozen individual and collective exhibitions, including at the 11th Berlin Biennale (2020), the Moravian Gallery in Brno (CZ) (2017), the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko (PL) (2020), the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2020), the Art Encounters Biennale in Timişoara (RO) (2019) and the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum – Kulturen der Welt in Cologne (DE). Since 2011, she has organized the international artistic residency programme Jaw Dikh! in Czarna Góra (PL), intended for Roma and non-Roma artists. She received distinction at the 42nd and 44th Painting Biennale Bielska Jesień (2015, 2019), and holds a scholarship from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage (2018). She is a laureate of Polityka’s Passport for the best artist from Poland in 2020, and was awarded the Maria Anto and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven Art Prize for a Young Polish Artist (2021) counteracting exclusion, racial discrimination and xenophobia. She lives and works in Czarna Góra in Spisz.

Sophie Goltz lives and works in Salzburg and Berlin as a curator, art mediator and author. In 2020 she was appointed director of the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts Salzburg. From 2017 to 2020, she taught as an Assistant Professor in the new Museum Studies and Curatorial Practice (MA) programme at the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University Singapore and served as Deputy Director of Research and Academic Education at NTU Center for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore). From 2013 to 2016, she was Artistic Director of Stadtkuratorin Hamburg. From 2008 to 2017, she worked as a curator at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), where she also became Head of Communication and Art Education until 2013.