Małgorzata Mirga-Tas is a Polish-Roma artist and activist who, in her vibrant works, constructs an affirmative iconography of the largest European minority. Her textiles are created from fragments of various fabrics by what she calls "throwing material into the painting." Many of the pieces are taken directly from the wardrobes of those depicted, bearing traces of energy and use; others come from secondhand stores and carry a previous life of their own. Mirga-Tas weaves an image of the Roma as proto-Europeans, transcultural, and non-violent people, reshaping conventional stereotypes.

The installation presents the artist’s personal zodiac from the ongoing series Herstories, an affective archive presenting various Roma artists, antiracist or antifascist activists, or educators, who are her personal inspiration and guide her in life, from the left Timea Junghaus, Ceija Stojka, Esma Redžepova, Grażyna Mirga, and Soraya Post. These heroines practice what the scholar Ethel Brooks calls the feminism of the minority, one which does not separate women from their backgrounds, but works instead from within a specific context, on both the local and structural level. The composition was inspired by a depiction of the zodiac belt from the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara, a place where Warburg coined some of his key concepts, such as Bilderfahrzeuge, and which inspired his writings connecting the stars and architecture, astrology, and astronomy.


Małgorzata Mirga-Tas was born in Zakopane in 1978 and lives in Czarna Góra.