Someday life will be beautiful

2019 - 2020

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The audio-visual exhibition "Someday life will be beautiful" is a continuation of the project “When I grow up, I will be rich.” by Barbara Matejčić and Ana Opalić.

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"I am browsing through the scrapbook filled in by students of school predominantly attended by Roma in Međimurje at the end of the elementary school. For a few months, I spent my days with them during classes. In the scrapbook, everyone was asked the question of how they imagined their future. Jelena wanted to finish secondary school and get a job. She got married a little after she wrote that down, had three kids, didn't finish secondary school, and doesn't work. Elena wanted to have a good life and live without fear. She's a single mother, quit school, and doesn't work. Goran imagined he would drive a spacecraft. Some of them left only this question unanswered. When you ask younger Roma children what they want to be when they grow up, they immediately know - a doctor, a soccer player, an inspector, a hairdresser… By the end of elementary school, some dreams already melt away. They know that there could be schooling between how they are and how they wish to be. But they go hungry to school. They don't quite understand teachers because Croatian isn't their mother tongue. There's no one to help them learn. Teachers have low expectations of them. They start to have low expectations of themselves. They stop believing that they'll be better off than their parents. They do not give up because they do not consider education valuable, but because we do not consider these children and their education valuable. We teach them to accept the poverty they live in.

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Child poverty is an indicator of society. We are poor if our children are poor. In Croatia, children are among the poorest in the European Union, and Roma children are the poorest of the poor.

 

The audio-visual exhibition "Someday life will be beautiful" places us in spaces where Roma children live and dream of their future. To achieve their aspirations in such circumstances, they have to be overly persistent, hard-working, unwavering. Many of them will not be able to do so like many other non-Roma children would not in their position. The inequality in which they grow up is a lack of real freedom to achieve their dreams."

 

Barbara Matejčić

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