Lila Loisse

Lila Loisse (Born in 2000), is a Belgian artist with Sinti Manouche (gypsy) and Moroccan heritage living and working in London. She addresses traumas and taboos associated with her family's past as well as her own cultural background and identity. She also explores the idea of generational transmission. Several of her artworks have been inspired by her grandparents and their traumatic experiences with World War II as Sinté. This leads her to deal with subjects that arise questions about mental health, intergenerational trauma, and collective memory.

These themes are explored through installations, videos, and sculptures in a wide range of media, such as hay, wood, metal, and 3D animations. She works a lot with archives and artifacts from her grandparents. As a contemporary artist, Lila’s aim is to leave a trace and legacy for the future by sharing stories and preserving old memories of the past.

Lila Loisse holds a Foundation and Bachelor's diploma from the Arts University Bournemouth and is currently doing her Master's at the Royal College of Art in Contemporary Art practice.

My inner fragility and sensitivity to my community’s history is the catalyst of my work. The inspiration for each of my artworks comes from my admiration for what my grandparents endured and survived. The bond and love that I have for my father are what motivate me to research our past and solve the mysteries. The musical talent of my brother is the legacy of our family and the gypsy lifestyle. Together, we collaborate and share our story to heal from the intergenerational trauma of WWII.

We, Sinté, have been labeled as people without history, without a voice. Thus, the transmission of memory-related trauma from the genocide against Sinté is a subject I aim to unravel as an artist.

My works often take the form of memorials, I believe that my grandparent’s memory resides in the materials I make use of in my artworks. For instance, the hay in my work evokes the memories of my grandfather, who was imprisoned in a German labor camp and forced to build Mauser rifles, which were then delivered in a wooden box lined with hay. Hay was also used in the camps to maintain warmth. As much as hay is used to describe this horrific passage of my grandfather’s life, I believe that it also symbolised the joy of traveling and the horses that lived alongside my ancestors’ lives.

From tradition to silence, Penaa Menge Tchi - (We don’t say anything) is a video piece that explores the stigma associated with discussing painful events.

Many of our Sinti traditions involve fire, including the ritual of burning the deceased in their caravan alongside all their belongings. Throughout our long past of nomadism, this is key to understanding how the idea of memory is viewed in our community. After this ceremony, the deceased can no longer be mentioned out of concern that the ghost of the deceased (“mulo”) will come back to haunt us. After the Second World War almost no written records or archives relating to the gypsy community can be found. This lack of 'traces' and this silence can be explained in similar ways. We could not talk about traumatic memories, just as we had difficulties talking about our dead. This silence and these war-related traumas are passed on from generation to generation, and I have a vital need to study them. The role of fire would therefore be a passage to the afterlife, but also a way of burying the memory.

In Collaboration with:

Joe Mullin

Camera Operator

Ana Marija Ramić

Camera Operator

Medium:

Film

Size:

00:03:39

Based on a study that was made with mice around epigenetics. Yek Mek is an animation that follows a mouse playing hopscotch. The mouse here represents the trauma of the war each time landing on a date that represents the three generations of my family (grandparents, father, and me). Hopscotch is a game that you will find permanently drawn in many playgrounds in Belgium. At the very beginning of the war, my grandmother hid in a Catholic school, the game is therefore, a metaphor for her first place of trauma.