Consider the visual grammar of the "Gypsy" photograph. Exoticism, and "otherness" separating these people from their majority context. In the words of Czech Professor Miroslav Vojtĕchovský, these images are a theatre of grotesque characters, irreconcilably different, without redemption. Garish colour can further isolation.
RomaRising offers respectful black and white images of dignity, countering stereotype. Many among these souls are highly educated, and have capacity to function as government ministers and lead within society. Indeed, Mr. Ciprian Necula became State Secretary in the Ministry of European Union Funds, representing the Romanian Government. He is not unique.
Mary Evelyn Porter, educator, researcher, and writer produced oral narratives starting in Bulgaria, some 200 in all. Finally the last piece fell in place: hearing each individual's formational story. These narratives obviate "the tendency to define people of colour, rather than allowing them to speak for themselves." (Alina Şerban, Actor, Romania)
Alas, some of the most prepared Roma we encountered are sequestered to the "Gypsy Bubble" of Romani Affairs. Others, unable to deploy hard-earned degrees, seek locales where they are appreciated, allowing a normal life. Witness the obvious sense of freedom on the visages of those within the Canada folio.
RomaRising became a record of feminine empowerment. Time and again we encounter women of strength and achievement stepping onto the stage, and with impact.
RomaRising also has become an international community: participants from 14 countries met one another at the RomArchive rollout in Berlin, some for the first time.
A RomaRising/EU was possible. Enthusiastic endorsement within the Roma and Sinti community was lost on European underwriting institutions. With notable exception, RomaRising is self-funded, at considerable sacrifice.
Our hope is that majority societies will come to recognise the vast talent in these individuals of RomaRising. They are found treasure within their societies. Regardless of their chosen paths, one discovers them to be superlative embodiments of our common humanity.
A note about the narratives: they are transcribed, as told to us by each participant. They are not journalism. As with the portraits, they occurred at a point in time.
We would like to mention Asen Mitkov, of Bulgaria. When introduced to us by Viktoria Petrova, we knew immediately here was the capable colleague we had always sought: a knowledgeable collaborator, who effortlessly facilitated multiple situations, be it by his spoken Romanes, his equilibrium, his empathy. Asen is at the heart of the project's final decade.
Chad Evans Wyatt and Mary Evelyn Porter
Mary Evelyn Porter
"When you are a child of war..."
Mersud Selman Mersoo was born in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1986. He was raised in a Roma neighbourhood as one of five brothers and one sister. His father Muret and mother Sevdina strived to make the best life possible for themselves and their family. Mersud was a sensitive child. He was a bit intimidated by the teachers when he started school, not because he was discriminated against but because he was a little shy. He and his younger brother Ferdi went through school together. As a child Mersud wanted to be a singer, but when his brother became interested in art, Mersud decided to follow the same path. The two brothers painted each other. Later his younger sister Selma also determined to become an artist. Half of the Selman siblings are pursuing careers in art. The other brothers still live in Bosnia and work in metal recycling.
Mersud was six years old in 1992 when the Bosnian war began. "We were so hungry. I remember one day playing a game of marbles. The kid I was playing with had a loaf of bread. I asked him if he would give me some bread if I won. I was scared. I saw people beating each other up; the blood on the streets. Internal terrors became external, manifest."
At the conclusion of WWII, a federation of six separate states: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia became the Soviet controlled nation of Yugoslavia. Josef Tito ruled this multiethnic, multifaith confederation for decades keeping simmering tensions always under control. In the 1990s with the weakening of the Soviet Union, fissures began to appear encouraged by Serbian leader, Slobadan Milosevic who dreamed of a greater Serbia inhabited by Orthodox Christian Serbs.
In 1992, the European Community recognized the predominately Muslim, Bosnia as an independent entity. Milosevic reacted by attacking the capital city of Sarajevo and beginning a campaign of pillage, rape and murder which would later be deemed a war crime by the World Court at the Hague. The intent was to ethnically cleanse Bosnia by driving the Muslim Bosniaks out of their homeland.
There is no accurate estimate of the percentage of Roma in the Bosnia population. The UNHCR (July 2010) cites estimates from a low of 30,000 to a high of 100,000. There has been no census taken since 1991. There is wide agreement among human rights groups that the Roma are the most discriminated against ethnic minority and Muslim Roma doubly so.
"When you are a child of war, you want to paint everything. My brother and I took chalk and made sketches of each other on the pavement." I began to realize that I had talent. Our teacher, Mirza Ibrahimpašić encouraged us to enter the academy in Banja Luka to study art. My brother Ferdi and I waited until our sister Selma finished high school and in 2010, we all began together. The progress of Mersud, Ferdi and Selma as they enter the art world is detailed in this 2013 video by Možemo Više celebrating these young talented Bosnians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBbCU1H-84Y
When I finished my undergraduate arts degree, I moved to Budapest to enter the Roma English Language Programme at CEU. In 2016 Mersud Selman's exhibition, Silence was shown at the university. "My people have had silence imposed on them. To achieve clarity, each of us must speak for himself/herself." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BipOafMaZMA
Beginning in 2017, Mersud began to receive invitations from cities all over Europe to exhibit his work. He had an Exhibition in Milan, then in Berlin. Mersud was attracted by the vibrancy of Berlin and decided to move there.
In 2018, Mersud and Romanian Roma actress, Mihaela Drăgan presented the legend of Sara Kali to an audience at the Kai Dikhas Gallery in Berlin. While Mihaela performed her dramatic recitation, Sara Kali, Mersud painted the saint's image in fifteen minutes. "I painted the entire canvas in front of the audience as if I were her. Sara Kali became real to me. I had seen this terrifying presence in reality."
"Her left hand represents identity- your blood where you come from; the right hand is respect for everyone. The wheel is the Romani flag which shows the global reach of the Romani people. She is Sara Kali. She represents people of colour throughout the world."
Mersud Selman's latest Exhibition Beauty and Violence opened at the Kai Dikhas Gallery, the fifth of September 2019 with a performance and showing of his latest paintings including Sara Kali which is featured with Mersud's RomaRising portrait. (https://youtu.be/ALYrgl65yLM)
"The work is an investigation of identities and roles. My self-portraits represent the spectrum of our appearance: the visible and the invisible. Seen through our own eyes and through the eyes of others. Reshaped by hopes, wishes, stereotypes and constraints. We're surrounded by selfies as a basis of storytelling. Social media gives us a platform to connect and to share our realities with others. By sharing our faces in different stages we're seemingly able to curate the image of ourselves. But we fall back on one of the biggest questions of existence: Who am I and who do I want to be? Like children we are fascinated by our face in the mirror and create more and more images of ourselves to get new evidence of our existence. The act of painting myself reflects on the blind angles of the observer and collects the cheap promises, high expectations, the beauty and the violence we are all affected by. But only as single pieces can the images describe reality: as an incomplete puzzle of diversity.
The performance related to the series of self-portraits Beauty & Violence approaches the role of the observer. Standing in front of a white canvas, the art is pelted with red exemplifying the connection between beauty and violence. Red is the colour of love and death, the colour of roses and blood. While the imprint of my body will remain white on the canvas, I want to show through this performance that being shaped is always connected with risk: that you will become what your observer wishes to see."
Mary Evelyn Porter
Nihad Nino Pusija is a photographer originally from the city of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. He and his wife Patricia and their son Namik, have called Berlin home for more than twenty years. Patricia is a museologist. At present she is working in a Museum of Technology.
"I was born in Sarajevo fifty plus years ago. When I was a kid, Sarajevo had a very mixed population. My grandmother, Kata, was Roma or Sinti, originally from the Italian coast city Bari. She was ostracised by her family because she married a Lovro, who was a Croatian Gadjo. He might even have been part Roma, who knows. Kata moved to Croatia with him. Her son, Petar, Nino's uncle was raised Orthodox Christian." Nino's mother, Katarina, is Catholic. Nino's father, Jusuf is Muslim. His parents divorced when he was two and Nino spent a lot of time with his stepfather Muztafer (Mustafa).
"My mother hid her Roma background because of the Porajmos (Holocaust) of the Second World War. When I was a little boy, I sometimes spent holidays with my Croatian family from Zagreb. I was the darkest one at the beach. The other kids didn't want to play with me and called me Cigo (Gypsy)."
Nino studied political science and journalism in Sarajevo. In 1986 he became a volunteer photojournalist for the newspaper, Oslobodjenje, (Liberation). He received some commissions and took photos of a pilgrimage earning 5000 Deutsche Marks. Then he decided to travel. Nino moved to London and lived there for four years studying and working. Then he lived briefly in the U.S.
By 1991, the war had started in Croatia, the former Yugoslavia. The war then moved to Bosnia. "I could not believe this. Bosnia is so multi-cultural. Before the war Sarajevo was like a small Jerusalem with several religions and many ethnic groups."
Reuters began to train local photographers. Nino returned to Sarajevo in 1992 just before the outbreak of the conflict. "I hated photographing the war. Some of my colleagues already worked for news agencies (AP, AFP and Reuters) and were also documenting the war. Two were killed. Just the few weeks I spent in Sarajevo produced post-traumatic stress syndrome. Mine was mild compared to some of my colleagues."
"The vultures from news agencies would run toward the chaos – for example a grenade attack. They would begin immediately to photograph. I would run there also but my first reaction was to see if I knew anybody, if I could help. The press didn't understand that an empty shoe, a dropped purse in a blood puddle also symbolizes the impact of war. I couldn't feed that beast with my images."
"Then I left. I flew to Belgrade, to Serbia where nobody expected a someone with a Muslim name to go. My grandfather taught me. Go where you are least expected, and you will not be checked. I could not stay in Belgrade because the army was picking up people on the streets and sending them to the front lines. I could not fly back to London; all flights were closed. So, I caught a train to East Berlin and lived with a friend. He helped me get a visa. I found an unused studio and began to work again."
"Two years later, I managed to move to West Berlin and change my refugee status to temporary resident. I could finally travel again. Once in West Berlin, I began to go to gay bars and photograph drag queens. This again was an unexpected choice. As a photographer you have this possibility of entering unknown worlds taking photos, spending time with people and leaving."
During this period, between 1995 and 1997 Nino also worked with Bosnian Roma refugees from the former Yugoslavia who had 'Duldung' (Toleration) status in Germany. This impermanent status, neither citizen nor non-citizen, traps refugees in a cycle of uncertainty. The Duldung photographs part of a Cyclops Photo Factory exhibition project, became a chapter in a book published by the New Society for Fine Arts, Berlin.
The Roma refugees recognized Nino as Roma even though he did not know it himself. The refugees explained how they had managed to reach the west. They followed what they called the "Gypsy Way" using point by point landmarks, buildings or natural formations, rather than maps. There are now many Roma from the former Yugoslavia living in the US, Canada or Australia. They call themselves Bosnian, Croatian or Serb, not Roma. They hide their identity because "Gypsies" are not welcome anywhere. There are several thousand Roma now living in St. Louis, Missouri.
"It took several years to get recognition. Then invitations began to come in. I went to Italy and photographed Roma people in the refugee camps."
"I declared myself to be Roma in 2005 at an exhibition in Graz, Austria."
In 2007, the Alianz cultural foundation Germany and the Open Society Foundation sponsored the 1st Roma Pavillon in Venice. Timea Junghaus curated the Roma artist Exhibition Paradise Lost, bringing together artists and performers from all over Europe.
"I photograph families rather than just random people; in that way I built up contacts. I have kept the contacts going. Between 2010-12, I created a book of images of the children of those in Duldung status who I had photographed in the 1990s. Their parents were either still in the same status or they had been deported back to Kosovo or Bosnia."
Nino's collection of photographs from the 1990s to the present, "Down There Where the Spirit Meets the Bone," published in 2018 by Peperoni Books, currently distributed by Lehmstedt Verlag, is available in English and German.
At the moment Nino is working on several projects and exhibiting in Berlin.
Sofiya Zahova for RomArchive
Hedina Tahirović Sijerčić (b. 1960) is a Sarajevo-born Gurbet Romni who devotes herself equally to journalism, writing, activism, research and teaching. From the 1980s onwards she was a pioneer of Romani broadcasting in the former Yugoslav Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina as editor-in-chief of the radio programme 'Lačho džive, Romalen' (1986–92) and of the TV Sarajevo programme 'Malavipe' (1991–92).
Like many Bosnian Roma, Tahirović Sijerčić emigrated in the 1990s, first to Germany and later to Canada. In emigration she was engaged in educational activities for Romani children, research and publishing. Although most of her literary works have been published in emigration, they are based on motifs from the cultural heritage of her own Gurbet community.
Tahirović Sijerčić publishes in Romani, Bosnian and English. So far, she has written five children´s picture books, three collections of folklore, two poetry books, one biography (of her father) and several dictionaries based on the Gurbet dialect.
Her literary work, especially her folklore collections and children´s books, are based, on the one hand, on the Romani folklore motifs and narratives that she heard while growing up. On the other hand, the descriptions in her poetry and prose works relate to her personal experiences as a Romni, activist and woman (e.g., 'Rom like Thunder'). Her engagement in literature also involved translations of works of fiction into Romani.
Tahirović Sijerčić has been awarded a number of literature prizes, among others the Ferenc Sztojka Prize in Zagreb, Croatia (2011), the prize for the 'Best Promotion' of a book at the XXI Book Fair in Sarajevo (2009) and the international poetry prize 'The Golden Pen of Papusza' in Tarnow, Poland (2010).
Tahirović Sijerčić is also a dedicated Romani rights activist with a special interest in practitioner work in the field of children´s education and women´s rights. She has coedited an anthology of female Romani writers. As a researcher, she focuses on the intersection between gender, Romani ethnicity and literature and had published a number of academic works on the subject.
Selected bibliography
Tahirović Sijerčić, Hedina. 2004. Romany Legends. London: Turnshare.
Tahirović Sijerčić, Hedina. 2007. Dukh / Pain. Toronto: Magoria Books.
Tahirović Sijerčić, Hedina. 2009. Romani Paramicha. Stories and Legends of the Gurbeti Roma.Toronto: Magoria Books.
Tahirović Sijerčić, Hedina. 2009. Romani prince Penga. Toronto: Magoria Books.
Tahirović Sijerčić, Hedina. 2009. An unusual family. Toronto: Magoria Books.
Tahirović Sijerčić, Hedina. 2010. Karankochi-Kochi. Toronto: Magoria Books.
Tahirović-Sijerčić, Hedina. 2010. Čuj, osjeti bol /Ashun, hachar Dukh! Sarajevo: KNS.
Tahirović Sijerčić, Hedina. 2010. Shtar Phrala / Four Brothers. Toronto: Magoria Books. [Illustrated children's stories in English and Romani].
Tahirović Sijerčić, Hedina. 2011. Fish / Macho. Toronto: Magoria Books.
Tahirović Sijerčić, Hedina. 2011. Rom like Thunder. Toronto: Magoria Books.
Tahirović-Sijerčić, Hedina. 2012. Rom k'o Grom. Sarajevo: KNS.
Tahirović-Sijerčić, Hedina; Levine-Rasky, Cynthia (eds). 2017. A Romani Women's Anthology: Spectrum of the Blue Water. Toronto: Inanna Publication.
