Dr Daniel Baker is an artist, curator and art theorist. A Romani Gypsy born in Kent, he holds a PhD in Roma aesthetics from the Royal College of Art in London (Gypsy Visuality: Alfred Gell’s Art Nexus and its potential for artists, 2011) and was awarded his MA by the University of Greenwich (2002).

Baker was an exhibitor and adviser to the first and second Roma Pavilions – Paradise Lost and Call the Witness – at the 52nd and 54th editions of the Venice Biennale, as well as to one of the most important British art shows (featuring Romani artists Delaine Le Bas, Damian Le Bas and Ferdinand Koci), Second Site (2006) curated by Thomas A. Acton.

Baker’s work examines the role of art in the enactment of social agency, and an early published statement of this position was part of the Meet Your Neighbours: Contemporary Roma Art from Europe (2006, pp. 32–39) collection and the Paradise Lost catalogue (2007, p. 40); his work is held in public and private collections around the world, including the British Museum and the Tishman Speyer Collection in New York.
His publications and contributions include We Roma: A Critical Reader in Contemporary Art (2013), Ex Libris (2009) and ‘Bohemia Revisited’ in The European Magazine (2012).

He was the UK chairperson of the Gypsy Council (2006–09) and currently lives and works in London. His website [http://danielbaker.net] contains further details of his works and writing.

In 2019 Daniel Baker curated the exhibition Futuroma initiated by the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC) as a collateral event of the 58th Venice Biennale.

Exhibitions and Projects

2007
Paradise Lost – 1st Roma Pavilion, Venice Biennale, Venice

2011
Call the Witness – 2nd Roma Pavilion, Venice Biennale, Venice

2013
Former West: Documents, Constellations, Prospects – Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin

2015
Makeshifting: Structures of Mobility – solo exhibition, Cardiff Story Museum and Art Central Gallery, Barry, Wales
Dark Glass – solo exhibition, Galerie Kai Dikhas, Berlin
When the Oil Runs Out, People Will Need Horses – part of the Kakka Collective’s research initiative ‘Performing Romani Identities: Strategy and Critique’ (PRISaC), Autograph, Rivington Place, London
Practices and Notions of the Migrant Image – Valand Academy, Gothenburg

2017
The Travellers – KUMU, Tallinn

Collections

Sign Looking Glass, House of European Culture, Brussels
Anagram Looking Glass, Zabludowicz Collection, London
Gold Rose, Tishman Speyer Collection, New York
Cockerel Looking Glass, UBS Collection, Zurich
Romani Jivapen Jinapen, British Museum Collection, London