| Abstract | British Romani artist Delaine Le Bas (b. 1965, United Kingdom) confronts anti-Roma
prejudices and stereotypes in her multidisciplinary practice spanning assemblage to performance.
This thesis focuses on the artist’s 2005 work We Have A History, originally made for the
Hampshire County Cultural Trust’s exhibition The Living Album Project- Hampshire’s Gypsy
Heritage. I analyze the ways Le Bas utilizes textiles, text, family portraits, and contested visual
representations of the Roma to challenge the false notion of the Roma as a people without a
history. I argue that We Have A History constructs a counter-model of memory, distinct from the
larger historic repositories that do not justly represent the lived experiences of the Roma people.
This thesis examines how Le Bas tells a Roma history from the place and scale of her individual
family and, in so doing, creates a renewed context for seeing and recognizing British Romani
identity. |
