Roma Pavillon And the One doesn’t Stir without the Other

Emília Rigová’s altar explores and honors the oeuvre, career, success and life of her alter ego, Bári Raklóri. Her alias functions as a catalyst to narrate and embrace her Roma origins, leading the viewer into the dense groves of personal and familial tales and experiences. The sculptural arrangement exhibits personal items, family reliquiae, found objects, photographs, multimedia projections and artworks (in reproduction or fragments), assembled on an altar-like wooden structure. In their heterogeneity, the aesthetic weave of these elements creates an evocative and transcendental illustration of the contingent incommensurability of Roma identity. The figure of Bári Raklóri enables Rigová to build on Roma cosmology and forms of knowledge as well as the richness of their spiritual and material traditions. She develops narratives and cultivates a self-determined imaginarium of Europe’s largest ethnic minority. To elaborate hidden Roma (her-)stories rooted in affective familial rhizomes, she reveals their entanglement with overarching historical, national narratives in Europe. The exhibition consists of five additional sculptural assemblages developed and constructed in collaboration with notable members of the Milanese Roma community. These affective webs can be understood as the tangible materialisations of each of her collaborators’ voices, displaying personal memories and stories, illuminating the intangibility of their polyphonic community.