Ceija Stojka was born in Austria in 1933, the fifth child out of six in a family of Roma horse merchants. Deported at the age of ten with her mother Sidonie and other members of her family, she survived to three concentration camps, Auschwitz, Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen.
It is only forty years later, in 1988, at the age of fifty-five, that she felt the need and the necessity of speaking about it ; it is the start of an incredible memory work and, even-though considered as illiterate, she writes several poignant books, in a very poetic and personal style, which will make her the first Roma female survivor to account for her experience in the Nazi death camps, against oblivion and denial, against endemic racism.
Her testimony doesn’t end with the texts she will publish (4 books in total between 1988 and 2005), which very quickly award her a role as a pro-Roma activist in the Austrian society. In the 1990’s she starts to paint and draw, while in this field too, she is self-taught. She devotes herself to it body and soul, until her death in 2013.
Her body of work, paintings and drawings, created over about 20 years, on paper, cardboard or canvas, reckons about one thousand works. She was exhibited in Germany, Austria, United States, Japan, In France at La Friche Belle de Mai, Marseille at La maison rouge, Paris, and at Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid in 2019. These two last exhibitions had great press coverage with: le Monde, The New York Times, El Pais, The Guardian, Kunstforum international, Beaux-Arts Magazine, Artpress, Le Journal des Arts,..... Her works belong to several collections including Wien Museum, Vienne, Erste Collection, Vienne, Memorial Site CC Ravensbrück, Bergen-Belsen Memorial/Gedenkstätte Bergen-Belsen, Mucem, Marseille, Collection Antoine de Galbert, Paris.
COLLECTIONS
Wien Museum, Vienne (AT)
Erste Collection, Vienne (AT)
Memorial Site CC Ravensbrück (DE)
Bergen-Belsen Memorial/Gedenkstätte Bergen-Belsen (DE)
MUCEM, Marseille (FR)
Collection Antoine de Galbert, Paris (FR)