Parading with Evicted Women (Rozalb de Mura for laBOMBA)

The following feature is dedicated to the women from the Rahova-Uranus community: may fashion empower and help you in your everyday struggles. With thanks to Dagos Olea and the Rozalb de Mura collective.

Rahova-Uranus is considered as one of the most eclectic areas in Bucharest, still bearing the scars of a tormented history.

Behind the immense shadow of the Palace of Parliament, also known as People’s Palace, there are the derelict remains of former prosperous neighbourhoods erased to make space for the construction of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s infamous dream.

Beautiful houses and a local beer factory have now turned into rundown buildings, while the area also boasts the biggest flower market in the city and ARK, a recently renovated 19th century industrial building hosting offices, concerts and events.

It was here that Community Art Centre laBOMBA invited art and fashion collective Rozalb de Mura to organise a project focused on urban situations of social confrontation, exploring the life of the Gypsy community living in this neighbourhood.

The event featured electro-jazz band Biluna jamming with the children from Rahova-Uranus and a fashion show with 12 looks made by Rozalb de Mura using discarded clothes provided by the community members during a one-week residency in the area.

The looks showcased were testament to the cultural clash and collaboration between the conceptual world of Rozalb de Mura and the work of the most active women in the community and also tackled issues of beauty, femininity and identity.

As the fashion show turned into a party with a soundtrack courtesy of DJ Cristina, the Gypsy community, people from the flower market, hipsters, musicians and local kids, celebrated late into the night in the name of equality, inclusion and integration.

How did you get involved in this project?

Rozalb de Mura: For their first anniversary, Community Art Centre laBOMBA – founded by artist Maria Draghici, director Irina Gâdiută and choreographer Paul Dunca – invited Rozalb de Mura to creatively tutor the “Parada Femeilor Evacuate” (Parade of Evicted Women), a special event dedicated to the people living in Rahova-Uranus, a disadvantaged area of Bucharest. The laBOMBA team believes that art is a powerful way to highlight and tackle real problems of the people living in the community, so they organised this event to raise issues about the community being threatened with eviction from their derelict houses. The Roma women from Rahova-Uranus turned into the stars of a fashion show in which they showcased outfits made with recycled, decontextualised and recontextualised parts taken from their own clothes under Olah Gyarfas’s creative supervision. The Parade of Evicted Women was also part of laBOMBA’s contribution to bb4, the Bucharest Biennale.

Before the event took place you spent a one-week residency in the area, what kind of activities did you carry out with the local community?

Rozalb de Mura: laBOMBA has a tiny small tailoring atelier for sewing pyjamas and bed sheets. We worked there selecting clothes we got from the community and re-thinking them in order to create a mini-collection. It was the most sincere solution that we could come up with in a totally volunteer-based event that also followed the bb4 theme chosen by curator Felix Vogel, “Handlung. On Producing Possibilities”. Fashion students helped to quickly finish the 14 outfits. A lot of Romanian and foreign artists and curators were really amazed when they discovered laBOMBA, and also came to visit us during the residency and there was obviously a continuous riot of children running about!

What did you enjoy best about this experience?
Rozalb de Mura: Working with the women of the Rahova-Uranus community was an amazing experience. We learnt what discrimination means, heard their stories, tried to imagine how it is to live with the constant fear of eviction and observed the tensed relationship with the authorities. Yet we also admired their way of living life with such gusto and passion and the somehow authoritarian yet fun procedure of raising a myriad of kids, studying their survival skills in this rough world.

What was the most difficult aspect of this project?
Rozalb de Mura: For laBOMBA it was a bit of a struggle to get sponsorship for lighting, sound, make-up and hairstyling. Nevertheless, in the end, generosity triumphed and everything looked professional! And, yes, we barely survived the heavy chain smoking of the women there…that was insane!

In which ways did the conceptual world of Rozalb de Mura and the ideals of beauty and seduction of the women from the local community clashed and combined?
Rozalb de Mura: It was a clash, that’s for sure. But it turned into a spontaneous collaboration: Vali, Cristina, Viorica, Francisca, Onita, Cami, Gabi and Mihaela all showed very strong ideas about femininity, identity, seduction and style, and they also told us fascinating stories about their lives. Each outfit documented the meeting between Gyarfas’s serene and fairytale-like world and the noisy, colourful, rough and down-to-earth daily life of this community. There were constant discussions about fashion and beauty while we worked together and it was amazing to see the thrilled expressions on their faces when they realised that a touch of creativity and a little twist can work such wonders.

Do you feel that such projects can help people opening up to and understand those communities perceived in negative ways?
Rozalb de Mura: This was a small, yet real project. There was almost no money involved, but it brought us all immense joy and benefited both the sides working on this project. It’s something that never happens on those ambitious, theoretical, Europe-financed, government-related, stiff-lipped projects involving the Roma communities. Things would be different if there could be more initiatives like this one to integrate Romas in society through programs that would indeed resonate with their spirit.

What was the most rewarding aspect of this event?
Rozalb de Mura: The sheer joy of the girls catwalking, amidst all the ovations and applause, their pride at looking beautiful in those special clothes, make-up and hairstyles. You could actually feel their goosebumps! It was pure happiness, riotous and ecstatic and we had the coolest mix of people in the audience: kids chaotically darting on stage, models looking awesome and their relatives beaming with excitement, the hipster scene taken aback by this explosion of energy…not exactly your typical fashion show!

Will there be a follow up project in support of the local community?
Rozalb de Mura: The situation of the Rahova-Uranus community is quite uncertain. laBOMBA is not the most attractive project for companies or institutional sponsors. We therefore thought of something practical that would actually help the project and came up with an idea for a bag. Gyarfas will design a pattern for a bag and the community will produce the pieces in order to do some fund-raising for the activities at the art centre. The bags will be produced in their atelier and hopefully this fall there will be a limited edition available. The money raised by selling
the Rozalb de Mura bag for laBOMBA will return to them and finance educational and community art projects.

Are you working on any special projects at the moment that may involve art and fashion?
Rozalb de Mura: We have a few projects lined up: there’s a research residency at IASPIS in Stockholm with Swedish artist Lisa Torell, a performance at Pianissimo Gallery in Milan at the invitation of artist Ioana Nemes, and a recent commission to celebrate the 2nd anniversary of curator Alina Serban’s Centre for Visual Introspection Gallery in Bucharest.