Sweet ‘Art is proud to present a solo exhibition of work by Romani artist Corrina Eastwood, taking place during Romani month. Corrina is co-director of Sweet ‘Art and an artist, art psychotherapist, writer, educator and activist.

The exhibition Held Tradderly explores on personal, community and cultural levels the significance of death rituals within the Romani Gypsy community. The Romani people are genetically distinct from other populations and the initial out-migration of the Romani diaspora from India has been traced to the sixth century with paths through central Asia, the Caucaus and the Middle East where a divergence of Eastern and Western branches began in the twelfth century. Tradderly means carefully in Romanichal, the language still spoken by English Romani communities, although now acknowledged as an endangered language.

In this body of work Corrina explores her Romani ethnicity, along with other intersecting identities and documents through sculptural and photographic response, the transformative, painful yet often beautiful process of managing the end of life care and then death rituals and the funerals of both her parents and a beloved Aunt. 

The potential tensions and entanglements of holding multiple identity markers, and existing in and bridging different, sometimes culturally conflicting communities, are explored in the art works both displayed and shown in photographic essays. Most sculptural pieces having been created during or just following the end of life care of her parents, as enactments of embodying and processing grief, and then displayed as offerings on their caskets during the Romani ritual of sitting up. Sitting up is where the body of the passed loved one returns home for a duration of time before the funeral and mourners sit up all night with a fire outside and share food and stories of the lost loved one. The photographic essays also document the burning of belongings of her father following his funeral, another Romani ritual originating for the traditional custom of the passed being cremated in their Vardo (caravan) along with all their possessions.

Alongside these standing traditions, exploration of an introduction of new ways of honouring the dead by the artist are present, with her creation of artworks constructed and offered at sitting up, and to exhibit after in memorial. These movingly include works that incorporate casts of her parents’ hands taken before their deaths.