Małgorzata Mirga-Tas is a Polish-Rom visual artist, sculptor, painter, educator and activist. Born in 1978, she lives and works in Czarna Góra, a Rom village at the foot of the Tatra Mountains, where she also works as an educator and activist. She combines various techniques to explore the complex identity of the Romani people, particularly Polish Romani people, and to depict the everyday life of her community. Her work explores the history of the Romani people and the transcultural and transnational experiences associated with being Romani.
Mirga-Tas’s approach constitutes a form of ethnography from within, which, in its own way, builds upon and engages in dialogue with the work of her uncle Andrzej Mirga, an ethnographer who studied the Romani community from within. This critical tension between the objectification of Romani culture and lived experience is a recurring theme in Mirga-Tas’s work. Drawing on history and art history, she employs strategies of reappropriation and upcycling to uncover the mechanisms underlying many popular representations of the Roma, both in Poland and elsewhere. By giving her community a voice, Mirga-Tas bears witness to the transformations of the European social landscape, both past and present.
Among his many solo exhibitions, notable examples include, in 2022, the Polish Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale. In 2023, the Brücke Museum, Berlin, and the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville. In 2024, Tate St Ives, Cornwall, and the Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht. In 2025, the Kunsthaus Bregenz and the Kunstmuseum Luzern.