Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding
Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding was a partly retrospective exhibition of work by artist Delaine Le Bas at Glasgow’s Tramway – a uniquely huge space dedicated to installation and/or large-scale sculpture.
It shared parts of her previous exhibition Witch Hunt (including a booklet of letters complaining about how morally corrupt that exhibition was – and ironically – what a travesty it was putting it in a public/publicly funded space (read on to understand this reference).
Today, I’m sharing my review of this exhibition on our language school blog as an antidote to the usual Halloween drivel.
Witches & Halloween Culture in the UK
I find modern British Halloween a commercial bastardisation of traditional culture, including crassly appropriated imagery that is hugely insensitive to our national history of persecuting women as witches.
As a tribute, let’s hear from a different voice.
One who’s been demonised for her ethnicity.
One who’s denied an individual identity and a right to belong anywhere.
And yet, one who is shouting so very loudly, and beautifully for women everywhere.
Topics: Halloween, Contemporary Art, Traditional Crafts, Romani Culture (and continuing Persecution), Feminism, Medieval Witch Hunts, Contemporary UK Culture & Politics, Scottish/Glasgow Art.
Delaine Le Bas is a Romani artist who shares her perspectives on land, movement, gender, and discrimination through stitching and fabric craft (traditional skills of Romani/Indian peoples), and contemporary painterly marks that scream of hurt.
Understanding Culture through Art
Within huge walls of noise are a wealth of attractive details that seem safe and innocent – even naive: pretty ribbons, scrapbooking paper flowers, sequins, buttons: evocative of childhood and fireside and grandmothers.
The installations are populated by a repeating cast of goddesses, visionaries and witches, cultural symbols like Mickey Mouse, and individual politicians/political parties/agendas.
Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding is also threaded with the often appropriated iconography of Romani culture: horse-drawn caravans, ‘Gipsy Sauce,’ and real relics of her autobiography – a photo of her as a baby with her grandmother’s horse and the skeletal outline of a wagon which seems to trap the woman inside. (Womb?Prison?)
There’s just so much detail and information, you can feel how her identity gets eroded by the conflicting jumble of precious alongside tat.
UK Politics & Romani Rights
Othering political speeches, embroidered verbatim, calling for action to abolish the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Act (which currently prevents local authorities from forcing the Romani people off any public land).
It’s the usual dog whistle rhetoric implying ‘Gypsies’ are responsible for (not victims of) the housing crisis, border control, forced displacement and environmental breakdown.
Discussing The Human Rights Act
A voluptuous, pissed-off giant goddess owns one part of the exhibition.
She is screaming and brandishing snakes.
Nearby, the entire Universal Declaration of Human Rights Act is painstakingly hand embroidered, word for word, then crudely sketched over.
So is it precious or disposable? A pertinent question as large parts of Britain plot how to rescind from it post-BREXIT.
Wild Contradictions
Each work collides wildly expressive feminist emancipation with persecution, dominance and cultural pillaging.
The exhibition is also shockingly contradictory in its careful stitching and wild paint splashing – as is the simultaneous mythologisation and demonisation of Romani, Gypsy and Traveller peoples in the UK and Europe.
In a way, the exhibition speaks for such people, but much more so, it speaks just for her: Delaine Le Bas: a demonised woman with whole nations’ worths of prejudice heaped onto her.
Fresh Eyes on Culture
17071965 Unfolding is a cry for the universal right to a home, lifestyle, chosen identity and self-expression without hostility.
It’s an invitation to see our own culture afresh, to actively shed cultural prejudices, and to be especially aware of engineered ones (linguistic and otherwise).
A Modern-Day Witch Hunt
The mythologisation and demonisation of Romani, Gypsy and Traveller peoples in the UK and Europe is akin to the way our culture perpetuates witch lore, without acknowledging the 500+ year ‘witch’ purges of our past.
Iit’s time to question the cultural imagery used every Halloween: the evil witch.
Some of these slain women were healers, strong in knowledge of plants and alternative medicines. Some were the babbling insane. Others were just ugly, toothless ‘crones’ so they were burned alive because women are supposed to be young and pretty – and if they are not, they are sinister/useless.
Many were accused of witchcraft for revenge because they’d done something to piss someone off.
Most countries have shameful pasts, where indigenous peoples have been persecuted in the name of religion, perceived racial inferiority, speaking the wrong language or worshipping the wrong god.
How many countries are still tacky enough to put an effigy of the hanged in their window once a year?
Further Information
Language Note
Romani (or Roma). This is the preferred, respectful term for people of this ethnic group.
Do not use “Gypsy” unless referring to specific cases where the community has self-identified as such. It is prejoritive.
Related Posts
- Idols of Mud and Water by Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran
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Unseen | The Crimes & Victims of Scotland’s Blood Sport Industry
Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding ran 7th Jun – 13th Oct 2024. Our language school visited the exhibition as part of September is Art Month.
