Video Exhibition with Gipsy personalities, at the Bucharest Metro. Charlie Chaplin and Johnny Raducanu are among the characters you will see at the exhibition.
On Tuesday, April 15, Bucharest metro hosts a video exhibition featuring 11 gipsy personalities, including Ion Voicu, Charlie Chaplin, and Johnny Raducanu.
We are happy to launch a new project in collaboration with Metrorex and the National Roma Culture Center, in which we bring to the attention of travellers personalities of Roma culture, special people from various fields of activity, from film to painting, people in research who deserve to be noticed, because we know and believe that art can change mentalities, can unite people and then this approach has the role of bringing to the attention of the public Roma personalities who change history.
Alexandra Marin, Art Safari project manager
For 30 days, short, 25-second videos containing informational pills about gipsy people and their creation will be shown on subway stations and motorways screens.
Charlie Chaplin, Johnny Raducanu, Alina Erban, Zita Moldovan, Delia Grigore, Moca Rudy, Mihaela Dragan, Vasile Burtea, Ion Voicu, Eugen Raportoru, and Nicolae Gheorghe are among the celebrities featured in the show.
They are just the first 11 we have selected because we hope that this project will have continuity to promote the culture of minorities. You’ve all heard of Charlie Chaplin or Johnny Răducanu, and maybe not everyone knows that these personalities are Roma and are known worldwide. In addition to these, we also have well-known Romanians such as the violinist Ion Voicu or the young artists Mihaela Dragan and Zita Moldovan – fashion designers. So, you will discover information from various fields.
Alexandra Marin, Art Safari project manager
According to Mihai Neacsu, director of the National Romani Culture Center, the exhibition is a significant step in promoting Roma individuals.
This exhibition is an important step for promoting gipsy personalities who have brought pride to their culture. It means that we are beginning to realize that the gipsy elite assumed from an ethnic point of view, has a very important role in developing and promoting Romani culture. Our minority needs elite air and not the other way around. The elite also manages without the National Romani Culture Center and the National Agency for Romani. Still, we, as organizations, as a Romani movement, need as an air an elite that assumes its ethnic identity in public and represents role models. for Roma students and young people.
Mihai Neacsu, director of the National Romani Culture Center
He expects that following the exhibition’s 30 days, many Bucharest inhabitants, not only tourists, will have a „balanced” view of the gipsy.
One of the persons featured in the video exhibition is Delia Grigore, the president of the Romani Center Association Amare Rromentza, lecturer at the University of Bucharest, writer and poet.
The exhibition has two meanings: combating stereotypes, prejudices against gipsy, that is, in other words, anti-gipsy racism, which, unfortunately, still exists and, on the other hand, increasing their self-esteem of the gipsy, so a positive image and a possible more relaxed and even proud self-assumption as a gipsy. (…) We hope that non-gipsy will know us better, respect each other and have a dialogue with us, and be in the best possible relations of intercultural dialogue and mutual respect. On the other hand, we hope that our gipsies may have a different self-image.
Delia Griogore, president of Romani Center Association Amare Rromentza
Photo Source: Metrorex Facebook page
