Malgozata Mirga-Tas is a polish artist, teacher, and activist of Roma descent. Her
works in patchwork and embroidery address the history of representations of Roma
populations, for centuries referred to as gypsies and exoticized as a vagabond
culture. In a series of works titled Out of Egypt, the artist presents compositions
based on a 17 th century group of engravings by the French artist Jacques Callot’s
titled Le Bohémiens, also known as Les Égyptiens and La Vie Errante des
Bohémiens, (The Gypsies, The Wandering Lives of Gypsies). While these
images depict the Roma as Europe’s exotic “other,” as wanderers in oriental
attire whose homeland was associated at the time with Egypt, Mirga-Tas was
interested in the fact that these images represent perhaps the earliest visual
depictions of this population. Here she presents the images as gigantic patch-
work tapestries in lace and gold, giving them a royal character.