1. Portraits & Performativity:
Romani Women Artists & Identity

2. Women (identifying) artists descending from Romani, Sinti, and other related ethnic groups often lumped together as “Gypsy,” a racial slur, are yoked with the iconic “Gypsy Woman,” an exotic archetypal amalgam of sexual, criminal, and magical stereotypes. This trope recurs in popular culture and is far more likely to be recognized and recapitulated than images of Roma, by Roma. Much of the work that Romani women create is contextualized by, or engages with, directly or indirectly, the dominant systems of racial and gender oppression, as well as sexism within the Romani community. The Romani intersectional feminist movement has much to contend with while bringing light to our human rights crisis, and creating role models, platforms, and safe spaces for Romani girls and women. This work begins with self-representation.

3. “…The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.” -Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2009, “The Danger of a Single Story”

4. Throughout art history, the same themes of sexuality and criminality appear in paintings of Romani women as fortune tellers. Caravaggio’s “The Fortune Teller” (c. 1594) depicts a well-dressed, young Italian man gazing into the eyes of a young Romani woman as she reads his palm, so entranced that he doesn’t notice her slipping his ring off his finger. Their locked eyes play on the old, absurd myth that Romani women possess the power of hypnotism and can put a man into a trance that allows us to make off with his goods while he smiles, enraptured.

5. Régnier’s “Cardsharps and Fortune Teller” (c
Régnier’s “Cardsharps and Fortune Teller” (c. 1626) depicts a scene of criminals and courtesans all swindling their company and each other. The fortune teller in the foreground gazes at the viewer and holds out her cards. The fortune teller in the background slips of the customer’s ring. Their bodies and divination tools read as markers of their corruption-- that which signifies them as Gypsies necessarily marks them as criminals.

6. Fortune teller and entertainer are of the few professions that gadjé historically allowed Roma to work. Henry Aloysius Hanke’s “La Gitana” (1936), winner of the Sulman Prize, features a topless Romani dancer. The dancer’s nudity suggests that Hanke is conflating Romani dance with sex work, which layers the sexualized Gypsy woman with the criminalized Gypsy woman. She is simply titled “La Gitana,” the Gypsy. Even outside of Europe, Romani stereotypes are well-known in the 20th century. If gadjé celebrate Romani women, it is only as sex objects. However, it isn’t truly the Romani women who are celebrated, but the gadjé’s power over them.

7. Charles Roka, a Hungarian painter who lived in Norway, painted kitch “Gypsy Girl” portraits between the 1950’s-1970’s. These were understandably popular.

8. The Portrait
“The portrait encompasses distinct and even contradictory aims: to reveal the sitter’s subjectivity or self-conception; and to exhibit the artist’s skill, expressive ability, and to some extent, views on art.”
“[The portrait artist]...seeks to convey the subject’s unique essence, character, thoughts and feelings, interior life, spiritual condition, individuality, personality, or emotional complexity.”
-- Cynthia Freeland, 2007, “Portraits in Photography and Painting”

9. The Self-Portrait as Reconstruction
Due to the widespread popularity of Gypsy stereotypes, when Romani artists represent themselves through portraiture, they are necessarily responding to those stereotypes whether they intend to or not.

10. Katelan Foisy, contemporary Sinti-American artist, writer, fortune teller, and model, claims the title La Gitana, Mistress of Magic. Her self portrait, “Gypsy,” incorporates Sinti iconography. The crows refer to the almost extinguished Sinti trade, crow charming, and their inclusion alongside butterflies and insects reference the belief that these creatures travel and communicate between worlds.

11. Traditionally, fortune telling is only practiced in times of financial desperation, and is merely the art of reading human nature and administering common sense therapy. Roma do not generally read for themselves. Most vitsas have separate spiritual/religious practices and rituals of divination and counsel meant solely for the community. Some Romani & Sinti families, however, like mine and Foisy’s, adapted fortune telling as both a spiritual art and a family trade. This is more common post-WWII, when many families lost their language and medicine traditions. This trade is sometimes used to fill in the gaps of cultural loss.
My great-great Sinti grandmother. Mathilde, dancer and fortune teller, in her dancing ensemble. Germany, late 1800’s.

12. Foisy’s self portraits often reflect her work as a reader, tapping into the spaces between worlds. Romani spirituality rests comfortably alongside most other religions. As such, Foisy practices Paganism concurrently, and is well-known in the Pagan community, a community frequently guilty of cultural appropriation. Her self portrait, “Samhain,” reflects that assimilation, combining familiar Sinti symbols and Pagan snake goddess imagery . She often gives lectures on “Gypsy Magic” using these buzzwords to lure an audience notorious for exoticizing Roma. She then ambush-educates them about the dangers of misrepresentation and the realities of Romani & Sinti culture, history, and spirituality. Instead of succumbing to the stereotypes that absolutely will be pressed upon her regardless, she supports herself, and she informs.

13. Foisy “La Gitana” self portrait series
There is power in a woman from a marginalized and fetishized ethnic group unapologetically reclaiming her sexuality and ethnicity as facets of her complex identity.

15. Her confrontation of stereotypes is subversive and performative, and the series ranges from stripped-down sexuality, individualized mysticism, and the raw violence of persecution. Even her portraits representing persecution, however, place her in an empowered, often mocking position.

16. Policing and Respectability Politics
Foisy is sometimes policed by individuals inside and outside the Romani community for her work. It is particularly crucial that Roma refrain from policing each other and engaging in respectability politics, particularly considering that Gypsy stereotypes are omnipresent and inescapable, and so the fear of Roma reinforcing these stereotypes by simply working family trades, dressing (non)traditionally, or reclaiming sexuality, are misguided. The desire to determine ‘how Romani’ someone is, as though there was a pure, cultural standard, is also counterproductive. What is more important is that we support each other’s expressions of the culture and acknowledge that these myriad experiences complete the stories behind the stereotypes, and in that way work to dismantle them. Expression allows us to reconstruct the many manifestations of Roma-ness. This is particularly pertinent to the Romani portrait artist.

17. “Romani feminists grapple with the dual task of criticising internal patriarchal structures while trying to avoid reinforcing negative stereotypes about the community.”
--Alexandra Oprea, 2010, “Intersectionality Backlash: A Romani Feminist’s Response”

18. Selma Selman Self Portraits
Selma Selman, artist, scholar, and teaching assistant at Syracuse, rejects the label “Romani artist” in favor of “artist of Romani descent.” In an interview with Central European University (2015), Selman says, “... I don't want to just show that [Roma] are discriminated against; I want to fight against discrimination. The quality of my art is rooted in the culture of the Roma people, but it is enhanced by the experience of being Bosnian… I have faced discrimination. This is why I don't want to present myself as a Roma artist. If I am an artist, it doesn't matter what I am…” (para. 8).
Selma Selman
Self Portraits

19. Selman’s portrait series, Do Not Be Like Me (2016) is comprised of oil paintings of the artist and her mother in matching outfits. She writes, “‘Do not be like me,’ is a phrase that I have heard escape from my mother’s mouth too many time[s]...it ...encapsulates the relationship between my mother and myself…. In the Romani tradition, her marriage was arranged at the tender age of thirteen. I do not have the authority to declare our traditional ways as a ‘mistake,’ but I do have a right to say that tradition must have its limits…..She was never in a position to teach me or help me with any of my schoolwork, nevertheless, she taught me how to be strong. She taught me the strength and bravery in ‘silence’; she taught me how to fight with ‘silence’” (2016).

20. In her artist’s statement, Selman (2013) writes that this video self portrait, “‘Do not look into Gypsy eyes’ is a mantra of the hyper-sexualized ‘Roma’ woman. A Roma woman is exotic, erotic and exciting. On the same token she is a bit too dangerous, a bit too ‘dirty,’ a bit too desirable – a woman whose eyes will seduce you, put a spell on you, and curse you.”
And in a statement for Cultural Gender Practices Network (n.d.) she adds, “If they talk about us in that way for years then I cannot guarantee that something cannot happen if you look into our eyes.”

21. In rejecting the “Romani artist” label, Selman can theoretically duck the audience’s impulse to essentialize. However, so much of her work directly deals with outsider prejudice and confronting Romani patriarchy, that it is difficult to separate her work from her ethnicity. However, her rejection of the label challenges the audience to see these issues as intersectional feminist issues, not merely ‘Romani issues.’
Some of her most recent self portraits, all titled “self-portrait,” deal with identity more symbolically.

22. Duality

23. Duality & ‘Pollution’ (Marime)

24. Marime

27. Selman engages directly with the perceived profanity of women’s bodies and blood through self-portrait, much like Foisy takes on the mantle of sexuality and mysticism. Selman challenges the non-Roma hegemony, as well as the patriarchal structure within Romani communities, demanding reform, and fiercely claiming her intersectional body and identity.
Both embrace an identity routinely othered and exoticized, and recognize that they cannot “unsex” themselves. Their empowerment lies in unabashed reclamation, representation, and reconstruction.