On May 16, 1944, Romani rose up against Nazi death camp guards at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The entire block of Roma men, women, and children were to be exterminated to make room for a transport of Hungarian Jews who had been marked capable of work. The uprising delayed the murder of the Roma until August. 

“Against a backdrop of rising right-wing hatred, we need to draw on that defiance and humanity.” Željko Jovanović

That defiance and humanity is present in the neighborhoods where Roma are being forcibly removed in Europe today. See “Following the Removals” video. 

About “Following the Removals” and the Cocoon series. From 2017-2019 I interviewed over 80 Roma both in The Numbered Streets neighborhood of Miskolc, Hungary and in Toronto, Canada where people from the neighborhood are fleeing. This became a performance installation, part of my Cocoon series on forced and voluntary migrations and the epidemics that follow. These performance installations are originally site-specific, enacted on the sites of the migrations. They then can become installations in exhibition spaces incorporating the walk-though sculpture, large scale portraits, the soundtrack, and often times snapshots and memorabilia from the site.

Good reads : The Romani Uprising in Auschwitz, 16 May 1944 by Michal Schuster, Museum of Romani Culture, translated by Gwendolyn Albert http://www.romea.cz/en/news/czech/the-romani-uprising-in-auschwitz-16-may-1944#.XsVU-dnAuUg.link