CEIJA STOJKA . WE COULDN’T DO ANYTHING Remembrance and resistance by Ceija Stojka
‘We couldn’t do anything’ is the title of a painting by Holocaust survivor and Roma artist Ceija Stojka. It describes the situation in the concentration camps where, as a child, she witnessed the racial-ideological extermination of her family and her people. At the beginning of the nineties, the time had come for Ceija Stojka to become active: As an autodidact, she began to create an extensive artistic and literary oeuvre, expressing the unspeakable in her poems and paintings and creating iconographic images for her memories. A unique story took its course. The artist created her own formal language with which she created haunting images of her memories. In doing so, she not only succeeded in banishing her trauma, but also freed herself from its clutches. The ‘there was nothing we could do’ became a powerful, political and emancipatory act. Today, her art is recognised and exhibited worldwide. Ceija Stojka is considered one of the central pioneers of contemporary Sinti and Roma art. The exhibition includes some of the most striking works of her oeuvre from the Kai Dikhas Collection.
The exhibition will open on Friday, August 1, 2025 at 6 pm. In addition to a welcome by the director of the art museum, Andreas Beitin, and an introduction by Katrin Unger (deputy director of the Bergen-Belsen Memorial), there will be a panel discussion with Gabriela and Santino Stojka – the artist’s daughter-in-law and grandson. Both will talk about personal memories, Ceija Stojka’s political commitment and the significance of her art in times of growing antiziganism.
Moderator: Andrea Wierich (Competence Center against Antiziganism of the Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation)
Curator: Moritz Pankok (Artistic Director of the Kai Dikhas Foundation)
The exhibition takes place in cooperation with the Kai Dikhas Foundation and the Competence Center against Antiziganism of the Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation.
Opening: 1 August 2025 – 6pm Duration: 2 August – 14 September 2025 Place: Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Hollerplatz 1, 38440 Wolfsburg
