Who Gets to Write Contemporary Art History?

Art history is never simply a record of what happened. It is also shaped by what was documented, collected, exhibited, taught and published—and by what cultural institutions chose to preserve and remember.

These processes influence which artists become part of the historical narrative, which works remain visible, and which artistic practices are overlooked or remembered only in fragments.

Roma artists have participated in contemporary art for decades. Yet the history of their participation across Central Europe remains fragmented, dispersed across different countries, institutions, exhibitions, publications and personal memories.

EPICENTRE: Roma History of Contemporaneity in Central Europe begins with this gap.

Across Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, the project brings together works, exhibitions, institutions, people, texts and memories to trace connections that have not previously been assembled into a shared historical account.

The aim is not to construct a separate Roma art history alongside the history of contemporary art. It is to understand Roma artistic production as an integral part of the history of contemporaneity itself.

This means reconsidering not only which artists and works are remembered, but also how art history is constructed, whose contributions it recognises, and how its narratives might change when previously fragmented histories are brought into view.

Who gets to write contemporary art history? And how does that history change when Roma artistic production is recognised as part of it?

EPICENTRE invites us to reconsider these questions across borders, institutions and generations.

Follow the project as this shared history takes shape.

EPICENTRE: Roma History of Contemporaneity in Central Europe

Project partners: European Roma Cultural Foundation (Hungary), Foundation Towards Dialogue (Poland), Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica (Slovakia) and Artivist Lab (Czech Republic).