Ceija Stojka’s work gives visual expression to the event referred to by the Jews as Shoah, and by the Roma as Porajmos, which means roughly “the devouring.” Stojka comes from a well-known family among the Austrian Lovara-Roma. After publishing an autobiography, she also began to depict her experiences and memories through visual art. She is one of the few survivors of a family that fell victim to Sinti and Roma persecution during the Holocaust.
In strikingly expressive oil paintings,watercolours, and some rather rapid sketches, she lends convincing form to the indescribable. Her method of working is direct and immediate. She often uses her hands to apply paint to canvas, paper, or plain cardboard. Many of her images are accompanied by brief textual commentary. Through her writing and her art, Stojka takes on the vital task of admonishing us about the circumstance – which even now has yet to take root in the collective consciousness – that the Roma too were victims of the Holocaust. By doing so, she has had to accept being confronted again and again with the sufferings sustained by her people.
But Ceija Stojka produces other paintings as well, filled with colour, borne by an atmosphere of affection, filled with a very special wind. Roma trailers are visible, as are town squares where her family once stopped over, and in particular, the natural world. These pictures are like a step out of the darkness, testimony of an artist whose work affirms her existence and that of a world beyond the nightmare of history.
