Delaine Le Bas

Delaine Le Bas was born in 1965 in Worthing, United Kingdom. She studied at the St Martins School of Art in London. Delaine Le Bas is an interdisciplinary artist who creates installations, performances, photography, and film. Her work deals with issues of identity, race, gender, and sexuality, as well as the ongoing violence and exclusion directed at those perceived as “the Other” in society.

She was one of sixteen artists who participated in Paradise Lost, the first Roma Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2007. Together with her late husband, artist Damian Le Bas, she worked on the installations Safe European Home? (2011–2017) and co-produced stage artworks and costumes for Roma Armee at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin in 2017.

In 2015, Delaine founded the Romani Embassy.

Together with her son, writer Damian James Le Bas, she has created performance and text-based works. Her work has been shown at the Venice Biennale in 2007, 2017, and 2019, the Gwangju Biennale in 2012, Critical Contemplations at Tate Modern in 2017, and ANTI – Athens Biennale in 2018.

Recent projects include costumes for Rewitching Europe, which premiered at the Gorki in Berlin in November 2019, as well as a new installation and performance Witch Hunt III, commissioned by the Gorki for the 4th Berliner Herbstsalon DE-HEIMATIZE IT!, which opened in October 2019.

Delaine was one of the artists featured in The Crack Begins Within at the Berlin Biennale 2020 and created St Sara Kali George, a mixed-media installation for The Storefront For Dissident Bodies.