Afterword

The Renaissance of Romani Re-presentation (as, primarily, self-representation), I contend, comes about because of two struggles (or needs) within the Gypsy, Roma, or Traveller (GRT) artist. Firstly, as an individual processing their own relationship to their 'Gypsyhood', one's ethnic identity is experienced from within. This includes (but is not limited to) the spiritual experience, emotional, mental and physical experiences, the Dreaming Self, our ancestral echoes, our sexual and/or gendered selves.

It is the capacity to hold the tension between one's inner ethnic experience and one’s potential artistic expression.

It is also a fragile moment of conscious awareness of an as-yet unrealised desire to express. Holding these together as one and the same manifestation, in thought, word and deed, often before the opportunity arises to physically express this artistic Romani or Traveller Self, is that tension.

Secondly, there is the struggle (or need) to express artistically one's inner experience of their Ethnic Self with other human beings, the outside world, and the institutions of a dominant, 'national' non-Romani culture.

This second imperative is met with two spaces of integrational potential. Firstly, by approaching and being recognised by one's Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller peers and colleagues, within the ethnic community of belonging. Simultaneously, by interfacing with the hierarchies and 'gatekeepers' of dominant cultural institutions, and socio-political constructs, this presents the second space.

It is an ideological and literal space in which we find no place for the collective 'Us' as Romani - we fall between the cracks in institutional diversity and inclusion programming. We are left out of anti-racism policies, 'action-plans', and strategies, never quite meeting their (non-Roma) criteria as Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME) or Black, Indigenous People of Colour (BIPOC).

The primary bridging experience between the spaces of the personal-individual interior, and the external interface with the non-Romani collective, naturally presents the Gypsy, Roma, or Traveller artist with questions.

As we approach this bridging experience, do we as Romani artists need permission to express? Is it safe to create? Are we allowed to take up artistic and creative space in our fullness of expression, which includes an integrated ethnic identity? And who requires and provides these permissions, allowances and aspects of safety? These are questions to my peers and contemporaries whom, I perceive, are asking the very same questions of themselves, of Romani culture itself (as a living form of adaptive and flexible parameters) and of the wider arts community.

In this contemporary climate of policy review, diversity and inclusion, I can speak to the beginnings of positive movements within UK and European arts and heritage institutions and national archives (such as the Victoria & Albert Museum, the National Trust, Europeana, the WEAVE project, ERIAC). However, this progress has been borne out of, in the first instance, actively presenting as a Romani Artist (or Gypsy, Roma, or Traveller organisation), requesting access, reviewing the archive (in my case, as an independent researching artist and a member of the public). I have found progress severely lacking, and other artists, organisations, and researchers also find themselves frustrated. At the time of writing, I can confirm some of the largest institutions of dominant culture misunderstand us completely or, more painfully, are not aware, or even dismissive, of our contemporary context and how that empowers us to speak to our (mis-labelled) historical contexts, with authority.

Are we at risk of continuing to be written into the historical and archival narrative as a ‘folk-memory’, which indeed facilitates denial of our contemporary existence in the arts? As artists, researchers, historians and keepers of our own culture, we do not require the voice of gadjé or gorgio curators and interlocutors to tell us who we are.

However, in the same moment, we require access, as a basic right, to reclaim the artefacts in the archives and insist upon corrections of inaccuracies, to pull our Romani and Traveller Ancestors (via their art and craft works, tangible and intangible heritage[s]) from the Grand Tour generalisations of 'folk art', 'peasant art' and 'miscellaneous tribal artefacts' to more accurate reflections.

I argue, we are inside the archives, but we are hidden - what we are hidden beneath is historical and unthinking colonial language, 'racial' objectification and the often wilful ignorance of the archivists of the past.

This re-calibration towards the contemporary context of living, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Artists (as opposed to artistic subjects), appears to have taken those responsible for due diligence of dominant cultural, anti-racism, a little by surprise.

May we continue to offer such surprises by our continued presence, may we be the writers of our own story, funded as respected researchers and creatives, speaking, and representing from that place of ethnic empowerment.

Together…