Robert Gabris – Acts of Provocation and Self-Protection or the Power of Prohibition and Taboos

Robert Gabris’ work You Will Never Belong Into My Space presents the viewer with three domestic scenes. We see the interiors of three distinct rooms presumed to be the artist’s father’s home, photographed in full frontal. The spaces are carefully assembled models in the scale of 1:20. They are documented and subsequently blown up to near real-life scale in the form of wallpapers, creating the illusion that one could walk into them at any time.

In reality, though, these spaces don’t exist and never have – at least not as such. On the one hand, they have been carefully crafted by the artist in order to speak about the existential precarity of Roma life in Slovakia without falling into the social-porn trap to satisfy the white gaze. On the other, they also intentionally address the institutional exploitation of identity politics and intersectionality under the banner of inclusivity, all while rendering homage to his late father Edo Gabris.

These translations, first into a model and then into a wallpaper, reveal themselves as strategic artistic decisions that make it possible to represent the impossibility and negation of space in a society that still violently discriminates and neglects its Roma citizens. Roma settlements in Slovakia are severely underfunded, and often lack electricity, fresh water, appropriate sewage or waste collection systems and heating. In parallel racism, discrimination and a deeply engrained negative perception of Roma people perpetuate an abusive vicious cycle that makes it hard, if not impossible, to finish school, get higher education and subsequently decent paying jobs in order to improve their own living conditions, given that the state’s ‘efforts’ remain empty electoral promises, at best resulting in what seems to be a ‘confirmation’ of all the negative stereotypes and racist tropes.

It is precisely here where Gabris positions his work, playing both sides, if you will. In this sense, You Will Never Belong Into My Space can be read in manyfold ways: the proclamation of a white supremacist society ruled by fear, or of institutions riddled with structural racism but claiming inclusivity, diversity and whatnot, or conversely an exclamation seeking to preserve and sustain the corroded yet distinct identity, customs and forms of kinship lived by Roma people trying to carve out a space in society and cultural institutions alike.

Text: Laura Amann

Image captions

All images: Robert Gabris, YOU WILL NEVER BELONG INTO MY SPACE!, Replica of my father‘s house – model 1:20, Vienna, 2021