EPICENTRE: Roma History of Contemporaneity
With the support of the International Visegrad Fund we are launching an exciting new creative cooperation between the leading shapers of Roma contemporary cultural discourse to re-establish Central Europe as the epicentre of Roma creative capital in Europe. The Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica, Faculty of Fine Arts, (Slovakia), Fundacja W Stronę Dialogu (Poland), Artivist Lab z.s. (Czech Republic) together with our Foundation ERCF (Hungary) will write, curate and perform Roma in complete artistic freedom, and educate a new generation about the Roma contribution to Central European national cultures and history.
Artivist Lab (CZ)
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European Roma Cultural Foundation (HU)
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The Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica Faculty of Fine Arts (SK)
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Fundacja W Stronę Dialogu (PL)
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Artivist Lab (CZ) ✳︎ European Roma Cultural Foundation (HU) ✳︎ The Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica Faculty of Fine Arts (SK) ✳︎ Fundacja W Stronę Dialogu (PL) ✳︎
Fundacja W Stronę Dialogu, founded in 2012, is the leading Roma-led cultural organisation in Poland and runs the Roma Community Center in Warsaw — a working space for exhibitions, workshops and Roma/non-Roma encounter. Its record sits on this project's axis of artistic freedom: the Ceija Stojka publication "I Have Freedom" with its school materials; the "Breaking Stereotypes" campaign at the Zachęta National Gallery; the 2025 Roma women's mural in Warsaw; and in 2026 the public programme around Krzysztof Gil's Zachęta exhibition. President Dr. Joanna Talewicz, co-curator of Mirga-Tas's Polish Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, leads the Polish component. I have worked with Talewicz across Roma cultural advocacy for years; she gives the consortium its Polish painting lineage and an active national-gallery channel.
The Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica, Faculty of Fine Arts, is one of Slovakia's key public art schools, with sustained work in contemporary visual art, exhibitions and international cooperation (Slovak Arts Council, Erasmus+, Gallery FX, projects such as Iron Casting and Artórium). It is chosen for the living link it carries: Assoc. Prof. Emília Rigová — Slovak-Roma artist, Oskár Čepan Award 2018, subject of the official Roma exhibition at the 23rd Triennale Milano 2022 which I curated — teaches here and leads the Slovak component. When she studied here (1999–2005) she was the only Roma student and there was no Roma pedagogue; she now trains the next Roma generation in the Painting Department. ERCF and Rigova have collaborated at Gallery8 Budapest and at the Triennale Milano. The Academy anchors the multigenerational claim of the project.
Artivist Lab, z.s. is an independent Prague art organisation devoted to freedom of artistic expression and the long-term support of Roma contemporary art. It founded the Avindo residency for Roma artists, curators and theorists, has staged more than fifteen exhibitions with around twenty Roma artists, and works with Charles University, the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and the Prague City Gallery (GHMP). Its founder Tamara Moyzes curated the Roma section of GHMP's "Art and Activism" and wrote the catalogue history of Czech Roma contemporary art 2007–2025. Moyzes leads the Czech component. Moyzes represents her curatorial expertise in Czech Roma art and a rigorous scholarship in artistic freedom; we catalysed the past decades in Roma contemporary-art together, it makes this reflecting and history writing cooperation urgent.
