Lagernde Zigeunerfamilie Mit Ziege 

Otto Mueller rendered this resting Roma family with a goat in simple strokes of lithographic ink on paper. Mueller was part of the German Expressionist group ‘Die Brücke’, active in the early 20th century, who were interested in primitivism. In Germany at this time, there was a romanticized fascination with the Roma people, also known as ‘gypsies’ but, simultaneously, they were a marginalized group facing discrimination. Mueller, like many artists of his time, sought to represent them as ‘authentic’ and ‘free’ from modern society. What does it mean to flatten a culture into a single story, especially through the eyes of someone outside of that community? Here, Mueller’s work invites us to consider the complexities of cultural representation, and the power dynamics inherent in how we perceive and depict one another. It is a quiet moment, yet it speaks volumes about the act of seeing, and who gets to do the seeing.