I’ve created a world, and it’s called Delainia,” says Delaine Le Bas, speaking ahead of the opening of her oeuvre-spanning Glasgow exhibition Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding. Working with textiles, sculpture and performance art, the British Romany artist has been making politically charged art for most of her life. “It starts with my birthdate [referenced in the title of the exhibition], but it’s still going on. I’m using the word ‘unfolding’ because one thing leads into the other,” she says. “I see my work as one whole big piece.”
Le Bas’s tapestries, drawings, videos and costumes are tethered by recurring themes and motifs, relating to racism, feminism and untold histories. Her work addresses the exclusion of Roma, Gypsy and Traveller people, incorporating graphic and linguistic symbols to comment on the historic and enduring discrimination and misrepresentation of these communities. This year, she is nominated for the Turner prize and the upcoming Glasgow show is an opportunity to see her work before the Turner nominees are showcased at London’s Tate Britain in September. In Glasgow, Le Bas will exhibit textiles and embroideries that span decades, alongside a new site-specific installation of a metal circus carriage. These pieces, old and new, form a constellation of woven, drawn, painted and sculpted fragments that resurface as part of new allegorical installations.
“I’ve always been politically driven,” says Le Bas. Born in Worthing in 1965, she was the only child out of five siblings to finish school. She joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament when she was just 13, and adored punk bands such as X-Ray Spex. “It was the first time I’d heard someone speaking in any way about how I felt about myself in the world,” she says.
A lover of fashion and textiles, Le Bas was determined to go to art school. “The way you wear things sends out signals and messages,” she says. “I’m interested in how you can subvert the imagery on textiles, play with it and create other messages within that.” She earned a place to study at West Sussex College of Design, where she met her late husband, the artist Damian Le Bas, also a Traveller, who died in 2017. She went on to Central Saint Martins, he to the Royal College of Art; they were married for 34 years and collaborated on several projects that confronted the demonisation of marginalised communities.
Found objects, knick-knacks, totems and embroidery are all central to Le Bas’s world, as is text. The artist always carries a small notebook to jot down ideas. “Language is a massive exclusionary tool. It’s used as a tactic to exclude and manipulate people,” she says. Her performance and installation piece, Beware of Linguistic Engineering, explores how – from Thatcherism to Brexit – language has been weaponised in politics. “The language that has been used to describe people like me historically still dominates a vision of who I should be.” she says. “That alone is a very powerful thing you’re constantly up against.”
This mixed-media approach is the ideal vehicle for Le Bas’s compulsion to question, criticise and destigmatise. “I come from a community where [the amount of people] not being able to read and write is still high. It’s a different set of ways of communicating,” she says. “I want to have a conversation with as many people as possible; it’s almost like creating lots of different doorways for people to be able to enter through.”
Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding is at Tramway, Glasgow, as part of Glasgow International Festival which runs from 7-23 June
A guided tour of Delainia: five works
The House of Le Bas, 2023
An archival display, this installation of personal ephemera – journals, records, artworks and items of clothing – traces the artist’s relationship and collaboration with her husband, Damian Le Bas. Together, they question what it means to be an outsider, and their experiences of negative attitudes towards Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities in the UK.
Damaged Goods, 2005 (main image)
Stitched, printed, collaged and embroidered, dressed in feathers and studded with sequins, Le Bas’s textile works are crafted out of everyday objects, often sourced at car boot sales and charity shops. Costumes are made from dresses, masks and kitsch toys, in a style that the artist has described as “precious yet reclaimed”.
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Talay O Puv, O Zeisko Tan Part 1, 2021
Le Bas works from her home and garden – “the biggest space I’ve got” – in Worthing. She paints out on the washing line, experimenting with materials and textures with a bricolage approach. This work was made during the Covid-19 lockdown and evokes an imaginary universe and interconnection in a time characterised by isolation.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 2013
This piece belongs to a wider installation titled Safe European Home?, made in collaboration with Le Bas’s husband. The project, first presented outside Vienna’s parliament in 2011, criticises the resurgence of far-right politics. This tapestry outlines all 30 human rights, scrawled round a sinister Mickey Mouse figure. “Too many people don’t know what the declaration contains,” she says.
Witch Hunt, 2009
Witches are a common character in Le Bas’s works. “It relates to this idea of being on the outside, having visions, or the power to heal, and how that has been maligned,” she says. Like many “outsiders”, these women provoked hysteria and faced persecution for their otherness. In 2009, Le Bas produced an installation and book, using the witch figure to explore intolerance and misrepresentation.
