The Roma (gypsy) population and their place in society are the main themes of an exhibition of pictures by four Hungarian Roma women painters that opened in the UNESCO headquarters in Paris on Tuesday evening.
The "Romantic Roads" exhibition, organised as part of programmes of the Hungarian EU Presidency, presents 42 paintings by Márta Bada, Mara Oláh, Jolán Oláh and Teréz Orsós.
The exhibition's curator Péter Szuhay said the paintings depicted how Roma women feel exposed in society in two ways: to Roma men and to mainstream society.
Szuhay, of the Budapest Museum of Ethnography, highlighted paintings by Mara Oláh. which feature imprinted texts; the artist "talks back" to society by sending messages.
The exhibition was opened by Laurence Argimon Pistre, the head of the UNESCO delegation to the European Commission and Katalin Bogyai, Hungary's Ambassador to UNESCO.












