Michaela Grobbel, PhD: The Past is Present: Memory Paintings by Romani Artist Ceija Stojka
Saturday, January 26, 2013

Many people don’t know very much about the Roma (aka “Gypsies”), who are Europe’s largest minority and have been living in different European countries for hundreds of years yet have not been treated as equal citizens. Although they had to suffer from Nazi persecution, like Jews and other targeted groups, the story of the Romani Holocaust remains largely untold. Only in the recent past have individual Roma come forward to share their history and culture with the non-Roma—as an attempt to undo harmful stereotypes and make themselves more understood by the majority culture.

Michaela will discuss paintings by Romani artist Ceija Stojka from Vienna (Austria) that give us a glimpse into a culture that is largely invisible to most. The paintings remember and tell stories about the artist’s life as a traveling child, her ordeals in three Nazi concentration camps, and her life after 1945 to the present. Reflective comments by Stojka about her paintings as well as her poetry shed light onto an ethnic group that has enriched European culture in many different ways.

Dr. Michaela Grobbel is Associate Professor of German at Sonoma State. Her book Enacting Past and Present: The Memory Theaters of Djuna Barnes, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Marguerite Duras (2004), in which she develops her theory of a “feminist art of memory,” shows her interest in the relationship of memory and performance in women’s autobiographical literature. She has extended this research into cultural studies, particularly ethnic minority studies, focusing on literature and theater by Roma in German-speaking countries.