An unusual news story emerged from debt-addled Eastern Europe last January: The Roma (or “Gypsy”) witches of Romania were facing a new, 16 percent income tax. Farewell, black-market magic. Although the new law gave some credibility to the much-maligned profession (the occupation “witch” was officially added to the government’s labor rolls), predictably, not all the enchantresses were pleased. Reports circulated that some covens planned to curse president Traian Ba˘sescu by throwing mandrake into the Danube River. To celebrate these “unknown psychic soldiers,” New York–based, Romanian-born Andra Ursuţa crafted Magical Terrorism, an exhibition that pointed out the ongoing discrimination the Roma population has faced. The show was an acerbic and alarming tribute.
At the heart of the array were three social-realist black-marble statues of women in babushkas. Modeled after a 2011 news image of a Roma woman awaiting her deportation from France, the sculptures are outfitted with colorful nylon jackets decorated with coins in three currencies—those of the US, Romania, and the EU. Part of the series Commerce Exterior, 2012–, these pieces paralleled a group of works from the series Conversion Table, 2012, installed nearby: large headless torsos with long, pointy breasts (a droopy version of the Madonna bullet bra) cast in aluminum, iron, or a concrete-manure blend and adorned, around their necks, with similarly decorative coin necklaces. The multi-currency jewelry points to the Roma’s nomadism, but it reads most forcefully as a comment on the population’s unstable relationship with capitalism. Marxists attribute a kind of “magic” to money and commodities—the mysterious value produced by circulation within systems of exchange. Here, dangling from Ursuţa’s sculptures, the coins are valued differently: for their aesthetic qualities and, perhaps, talismanic powers.