Esto ha pasado
This has happened
Ceija Stojka (1933-2013)
Paula Aisemberg
After Paris, La maison rouge (2018), Nijmegen, Netherland, Het Valkhof (2019), Museo Reina Sofia presents a major retrospective of this Austrian Roma artist’s paintings for the first time in Spain. Ceija Stojka was ten years old when she was deported, along with her mother, brothers and sisters. Over the course of the Second World War, she survived three concentration camps (Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen). But it wasn't until forty years later, at the age of fifty-four, that she embarked on a great work of memory, firstly through writing then, soon after, through drawing and painting.
Exhibition at Reina Sofia from November 22, 2019 to March 20, 2020
curators: Paula Aisemberg, Noëlig Le Roux, and Xavier Marchand
We said Rom rather than Gypsy.
For the plural too.
Not Roma.
Rom, with the emphasis on the ‘m’.
Almost like it had a double ‘m’.
But don’t worry, you can say Gypsy
I’m a Gypsy.
A dyed-in-the-wool Gypsy, in fact!*
*Ceija Stojka, in Auschwitz ist mein Mantel.
All images thanks to courtesy of Museo Reina Sofia