Romani Voices

In 2012, I was asked by Upplandsmuseet, a regional cultural history museum in my home town of Uppsala, Sweden, to create a portrait series of individual Roma residing in or temporarily visiting Sweden which would be shown in an outdoor exhibition tour visiting ten different Swedish cities in the summers of 2013 and 2014. The project was called Romani Voices and its aim was to spread knowledge about the Roma and their situation in society and to encourage people to reflect on questions of racism, exclusion and marginalization. The portraits were exhibited together with short interviews in Swedish, Romani and English. The interviews were carried out by Domino Kai and Mirelle Gyllenbäck, who are themselves Roma, and were then edited by Lars Forsberg, the text editor of the exhibition and book. The Roma is Europe’s largest minority and have suffered prejudice and persecution since first arriving on the continent in the 14th century. Successive waves of Roma have migrated from Eastern to Western Europe. Written records suggest my home country of Sweden received its first Roma migrants in 1512. Another westward movement followed the abolition of Roma slavery in Romania in the 1850s and 1860s. Currently, Sweden is receiving a fresh wave of Roma, originating mainly from Romania and Bulgaria, who visit Sweden to pick berries in the forests or play music or beg in the streets. Since the year 2000, the Roma have been legally recognized as one of Sweden’s five national minorities, with special rights to protection of their language and culture.