Art Practice | Current
My current practice explores social and cultural positionality and the complexities of my own intersectional identities. This reflexive practice includes considerations of gender
identity from feminist perspectives, sexuality and social expectations, and my identity as Romani, including my relationship to family, culture and ethnicity, and experiences of forced assimilation, racism and the complexities of 'belonging'.
Held Tradderly
Solo Exhibition
Art ByPass Gallery
The exhibition Held Tradderly explored on personal, community and cultural levels the significance of death rituals within the Romani Gypsy community. The Romani people are genetically distinct from other populations and the initial out-migration of the Romani diaspora from India has been traced to the sixth century with paths through central Asia, the Caucaus and the Middle East where a divergence of Eastern and Western branches began in the twelfth century. Tradderly means carefully in Romanichal, the language still spoken by English Romani communities, although now acknowledged as an endangered language.
In this body of work I explore my Romani ethnicity, along with other intersecting identities and document through sculptural and photographic response, the transformative, painful yet often beautiful process of managing the end of life care and then death rituals and the funerals of both my parents and a beloved Aunt.
The Pedestal Project (2017)
Photography Mia Hawk
A self-portrait project utilising costume, props and family and cultural narratives that hold significance for me. The exploring of costume and makeup becomes representative of identity formation, photographed as a visual narrative and cultural archive. This process was paralleled by my sharing with Mia a verbal narrative of life experience and desires to be ‘all of myself at once’ in part in response to the necessity from those within Romani communities to hide our true ethnicity if we can, to avoid racism. In this first portrait from the series, title Brazen Chavi, I wear pheasant skins gifted to me by my Dad from birds he had killed to eat, which may in part represent the tensions between middle-class appearance and working-class origins. The rawness of the attempted integration seems to be illustrated in the bloodied attachment / detachment of the skins. The theatrical makeup may represent war paint and the absurd, commenting on my pale skin and feelings of alienation and difference felt from within and outside of my community and family. As well as symbolising disguise as a form of self-protection. The word “slut” is scrawled across my chest responding to patriarchal shaming that exists for women within my community and beyond, and also comments on the complexities of sexuality. Trinkets inherited from family adorn my costume, I am about to eat caviar from an over-sized silver spoon.
Current Practice
My art practice incorporates my use of photography, self portraiture, film and found object sculpture. Combinations of which I often play with and reconfigure to exhibit as multi component installations or photo essays that explore the many faceted, intersectional and ever shifting narratives associated with identity formation and sense of self in social, political and personal contexts.
The Scrying Game 1: Gub (2025)
The series explores my Romani Gypsy ethnicity and familial relationships in the context of marginalisation and race related oppression and trauma. The body of the piece takes inspiration from my Grandmothers crystal ball, used to tell fortunes for money and for family members, while travelling, inherited now by my cousin. The replica ball contains one of many drawings I created as a child, which were included in many letters written to my Dad by my Mum, during times he had spent in prison.
Deathless Death (2024)
A sculpture made from mixed media materials which are primarily personal belongings or inherited family possessions. The piece explores ideas of patriarchal and matriarchal roles in Romani Gypsy communities and the impact of parenting, family and community on the development of self.
Rokka Nixi Photographic Essay (2022)
Rokka Nix means say nothing in Romanichal, something my Dad would often say to me growing up, in Romani Jib, if outsiders were asking questions he didn't want answered with honesty. The photographic essay was commissioned by The Romani Arts Company in 2022.
As an act of ritual, an attempt to externalise and symbolise my pain and to communicate what had been mostly unspoken with my Dad, I chose to build each little sculpture on his casket, in the hours before his Sitting Up (a Romani death ritual much like a wake) and documented this process. I also photographed other parts of his Sitting Up and the burning of some of his possessions to go with him. These traditional Romani rituals around death and loss felt incredibly important and containing.
Exhibitions and Work Installation
Some works shown in group exhibitions are not mine.
Community Engagement, Workshops, Art Therapy Workshops, Artist Mentoring, Q&As and Artist Talks.
I enjoy running bespoke workshops or artists mentoring sessions as well as providing artists talks. All responding to a projects community engagement needs which I see as an extension of my art practice and a way of informing my ongoing making. I have worked with groups of children and adults and have enjoyed working with Romani, Roma and Romani diaspora adults and children who have settled in the UK. I see my work with communities, artists talks and Q&As as both informing my ongoing practice and as an extension of my anti oppression and anti racism activism, challenging stereotypes and building understanding of difference between communities.
