Roma Artist Ceija Stojka

This book presents the work of Ceija Stojka (1933 –2013), an Austrian Romni writer, painter, activist, and musician, and survivor of the Holocaust. Beginning in the 1980s, Stojka created over a thousand drawings and paintings, whose subjects range from landscapes and recollections of her happy, prewar existence as part of a large horse-trading family to the mounting oppression of the Roma under the Nazi regime. Having survived the three concentration camps Ravensbrück, Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz as a child, Stojka left behind an oeuvre depicting her personal experience of arrests, exterminations, survival, and liberation, which was shared by millions. This book serves as an extension of the comprehensive Ceija Stojka exhibition that is hosted by the Austrian Cultural Forum New York between May and September 2023.

As the granddaughter of Ceija Stojka, Simona Jürs Anozie played a major role in Ceija Stojka’s life. She is mentioned often in Ceija Stojka’s writings as being an inspiration for creativity and art. Simona Jürs Anozie lives with her brother, Pablo Stojka, Ceija Stojka’s grandson, and her family in Vienna. Together with Pablo Stojka, she represents the next generation of Roma whom Ceija Stojka wanted to educate about the beauty of Romani cultures and the horrors of their past under National Socialism.

Dr. Stephanie Buhmann is the Head of Visual Art, Architecture & Design at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York. She has written extensively on visual art and her essays have appeared in a variety of books, international art magazines, and newspapers. Besides curating dozens of exhibitions, she has conducted over ninety published interviews with contemporary artists. In 2013 she conceived of an ongoing Studio Conversations series, focused on women of different generations working in diverse media. Her latest monograph Frederick Kiesler: Galaxies was published in 2023 (The Green Box, Berlin).

Lorely French, PhD. is a Professor of German, who teaches German Studies, International Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Pacific University, Oregon. She has published extensively on Ceija Stojka and Romani Literatures, most notably as author of Roma Voices in the German-speaking World (Bloomsbury 2015), as a contributor to RomArchive, the digital archive of Romani cultures, and as coeditor of a special issue on Romani Literatures for Romani Studies (2020). In 2022, she published the first English-language translation of the memoirs of Ceija Stojka (Camden House). Together with Carina Kurta, she represents the Ceija Stojka International Association and is a member of the board of the Gypsy Lore Society.

Dr. Michaela Grobbel is a Professor of German at Sonoma State University in Northern California. In her book Enacting Past and Present: The Memory Theaters of Djuna Barnes, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Marguerite Duras (2009), she develops her theory of a “feminist art of memory,” which shows her interest in the relationship of memory and performance in women’s autobiographical literature. She has extended this research into cultural studies, particularly ethnic minority studies, focusing on self-representation through literature, art and theater by Roma in German-speaking countries. She has published articles and book chapters about Romani autobiography and representations of Roma in literature and theater, and is currently working on a book about Romani artist Ceija Stojka.

Carina Kurta, art historian and museologist, has been accompanying the Stojka’s family for several years in the events surrounding Ceija Stojka's art. As a link between researchers, curators, museums, etc. she represents the Ceija Stojka International Association, together with Lorely French. Carina carried out a preservation project on Ceija Stojka's handwritten work, her notebooks and diaries.

With a PhD in Musicology, French language and literature from the University of Vienna, Dr. Susanne Keppler-Schlesinger holds the position of Director of the Austrian Cultural Forum New York. Prior to that, she was Deputy Director of the Vienna School of International Studies and Head of its Executive Training Department. She also served as Director of the Austrian Cultural Forum in Paris and chaired negotiations at the United Nations in New York. While serving in the Permanent Mission of Austria to the United Nations in New York, she focused on the promotion and protection of human rights, international drug control and the prevention of organized crime as well as the fight against terrorism. Dr. Keppler-Schlesinger gives lectures on modern diplomacy and diplomatic skills at the Nanovic Institute for European Studies of the University of Notre Dame (Indiana, USA).