WEŚ GILAWEŁ / THE FOREST IS SINGING

“Weś gilaweł / The Forest Sings”

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas

The artist residency and exhibition is a sculptural and textile, multi-part site-specific installation created specially for the Muzeum Palace, which is housed in the building of the former Gestapo headquarters in Zakopane – a particularly traumatic place of memory on the map of the town and the region.

The artist returns to her earlier works addressing the genocide of the Roma and Sinti, but for the first time speaks so openly about the wartime occupation history of her own family and of other Carpathian Roma during the Second World War in territories occupied by the Third Reich. The Forest Sings is in this sense the most personal and “Podhale” exhibition of the artist. Małgorzata Mirga-Tas recounts a traumatic family history while problematising the ways history is constructed. She shows places where history falls silent, narrative breaks down, and the need arises to tell the past in another way.

The Forest Sings is the artist’s first institutional exhibition in Zakopane.

About the artist:

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas is a Romani artist, educator and activist. Her work focuses on dismantling anti-Roma stereotypes and building a positive, affirmative iconography of Romani communities. Her works depict everyday life: human relations, social bonds and shared activities. The artist’s characteristic textile collages are made from materials and fabrics obtained from family and friends, giving them a personal, intimate dimension. Curtains, shirts, jewellery and bedsheets woven into colourful compositions become carriers of microhistories – individual stories that thoughtfully comment on and transform dominant social narratives.

In 2004 she graduated from the Faculty of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. Her works have been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at: Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen (2025), Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (2025–2026), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2025), Kunstmuseum Luzern (2025), Tate St Ives (2024–2025), Bonnefanten in Maastricht (2024), Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Seville (2023–2024), Manifesta 16 (2026), Triennale Kortrijk (2024), Barbican Centre in London (2023), Brücke Museum in Berlin (2023), the 14th Gwangju Biennale (2023), Konsthall in Gothenburg (2023), documenta 15 (2022), Międzynarodowe Centrum Kultury in Kraków (2022), Guangzhou Triennial (2022), the 11th Berlin Biennale (2020), Art Encounters Biennale in Timișoara (2019, 2021), the 3rd Autostrada Biennale in Pristina (2021) and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2020, 2025).

In 2022 Małgorzata Mirga-Tas represented Poland at the 59th Venice Biennale. She is the first Romani artist in the history of the Biennale whose works were shown in a national pavilion. She lives and works in Czarna Góra.

Curator: Wojciech Szymański

EVENT PARTNER: Fundacja Jaw Dikh

HONORARY PATRONAGE: Mayor of the City of Zakopane

MEDIA PATRONAGE: Tygodnik Podhalański, 24tp.pl, Radio 357

The exhibition can be viewed from 3 September 2026 to 31 January 2027 at Muzeum Palace, ul. Chałubińskiego 7.

Co-financed from state budget funds of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, within the task: Reinterpretation of the archival resources of the Tatra Museum.

‘Weś gilaweł / The forest Is singing

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas

The artist residency and exhibition is a multi-part, site-specific installation combining sculpture and textiles, created especially for the Palace Museum, which is housed in the building that formerly served as the Gestapo headquarters in Zakopane – a particularly traumatic site of remembrance on the map of the town and the region.

The artist returns to her earlier works, which addressed the genocide of the Roma and Sinti. However, this is the first time she has so openly discussed her own family’s history and that of other Carpathian Roma during the Second World War in…