Decolonizing Canonical Roma Representations The Cartographer with an Army

By means of a discussion of the work of the Romani artist Damian Le Bas, Huub van Baar shows that, in contemporary Romani art movements, we are able to observe a highly critical attitude towards prominent Roma and Gypsy representations in media, culture and art history in and beyond Europe. The essay argues that Le Bas developed, particularly through his inventive cartography, a novel visual language in which canonical Roma representations are decolonized. In both Damian and Delaine Le Bas’s work, known and unknown elements from present pasts are re-appropriated and reassembled, and strategically and actively positioned within the politics of the present.