In the atelier of RJSaK, I got a chance to go over the book about Ceija Stojka (1933-2013), a Romani Austrian painter, writer, musician and a survivor of the Holocaust, Auschwitz, Ravensbruck and Bargen-Belsen.
Ceija Stojka (Chaya Stoyka) was born in the Lovara ( "horse trader" – Hungarian ló"horse"+the plural of the nomina-agentis-suffix /-ari/) family in Austria, as a fifth out of six children. More than 200 members of her extended family died during the Nazi regime, including her father Karl and brother Ossi.
The Lovara Roma are also called Valch-Roma, due to the fact that they were slaves in Walachia (today a part of Romania) and Moldavia. Today most of the Lovara live in Vienna, Austria.
Stojka was the writer of the first Roma autobiographical account on the Nazi regime, titled We Live in Seclusion: The Memories of a Romni. It has been estimated that one quarter of the total population of Roma in Europe (220 000 people) were killed during the Nazi regime. She started painting at the age of 56, and ever since than she devoted her life to express the Roma sufferings under the Nazi's prosecution, documenting her life story and present aftermaths. Her works depict both the nostalgic feeling for the Romani everyday life before the Nazi prosecution, and the Romani sufferings in concentration camps.
She started painting using her fingertips, toothpicks, sometimes on cardboard, glass jars etc. Stojka said she had to paint to survive, to re-tell, to voice. Her paintings brought attention to the often ignored Roma genocide under the Nazis. Some describe her artworks as a hybrid between the folk-art and German expressionism; as a combination of the näivite and dark, sullen emotions mostly marked by black ink. The paintings depicting the life in concentration camps do not contain many colors, yet often include the Nazi symbol as a part of the depiction. This element I find particularly distinct on Stojka's artworks: How difficult it must be to paint such symbol after surviving the Holocaust? What does it mean to use paint, red and black and white, to depict the symbol of the deepest horror and terror? Is there a space for soothing of the pain through this?
Stojka's paintings resemble a nightmare: swastika symbols embodied around the figures, tortured expressions, children on the ground, wired feces and gas chambers, barking dogs, wagons loaded with numbness and depression - complete suffering. Portraying Hitler on "The Dance of the Swastika" shows a pinch of mockery of his horrifying icon, with an exaggerated head on the toothpick-built body, marching and saluting against the bloody background.
Stojka's art is the art of remembering, portraying the deep sadness that lived beyond her childhood experiences.
sources:http://www.theromanielders.org/elders/2/4/
http://rombase.uni-graz.at/cgi-bin/art.cgi?src=data/ethn/groupsat/at-lov.en.xml
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| "We lived in the shadows of a smoking crematorium, and we called the path in front of our barracks the 'highway to hell' because it led to the gas chambers." |
Ceija Stojka (Chaya Stoyka) was born in the Lovara ( "horse trader" – Hungarian ló"horse"+the plural of the nomina-agentis-suffix /-ari/) family in Austria, as a fifth out of six children. More than 200 members of her extended family died during the Nazi regime, including her father Karl and brother Ossi.
The Lovara Roma are also called Valch-Roma, due to the fact that they were slaves in Walachia (today a part of Romania) and Moldavia. Today most of the Lovara live in Vienna, Austria.
She started painting using her fingertips, toothpicks, sometimes on cardboard, glass jars etc. Stojka said she had to paint to survive, to re-tell, to voice. Her paintings brought attention to the often ignored Roma genocide under the Nazis. Some describe her artworks as a hybrid between the folk-art and German expressionism; as a combination of the näivite and dark, sullen emotions mostly marked by black ink. The paintings depicting the life in concentration camps do not contain many colors, yet often include the Nazi symbol as a part of the depiction. This element I find particularly distinct on Stojka's artworks: How difficult it must be to paint such symbol after surviving the Holocaust? What does it mean to use paint, red and black and white, to depict the symbol of the deepest horror and terror? Is there a space for soothing of the pain through this?
Stojka's paintings resemble a nightmare: swastika symbols embodied around the figures, tortured expressions, children on the ground, wired feces and gas chambers, barking dogs, wagons loaded with numbness and depression - complete suffering. Portraying Hitler on "The Dance of the Swastika" shows a pinch of mockery of his horrifying icon, with an exaggerated head on the toothpick-built body, marching and saluting against the bloody background.
Stojka's art is the art of remembering, portraying the deep sadness that lived beyond her childhood experiences.
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| The Dance of the Swastika |
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| Mama in Auschwitz |
sources:http://www.theromanielders.org/elders/2/4/
http://rombase.uni-graz.at/cgi-bin/art.cgi?src=data/ethn/groupsat/at-lov.en.xml
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