Delaine Le Bas – interview | Stranger in Silver Walking on Air | The White House, Dagenham

‘People still have expectations about what I should or shouldn't be doing’

From the heart of her installation at the White House in east London, the Romany artist talks about her inspirations, her processes, and how she seeks to deconstruct the stereotypes, language and images that are used to exclude Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities in broader society.

Entering the White House in Dagenham, east London, is like stepping through the proverbial looking glass. British Romani artist Delaine Le Bas (b1965) has transformed the community art space in the sprawling Becontree estate into an immersive labyrinth of calico-covered spaces, where textiles, painting, sculpture, collage and light combine to reveal the hidden histories and resistance of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) communities.

Le Bas spent six months as artist-in-residence at the 18th-century former farmhouse, which the fashion designer Hardy Amies once called home, and which is now operated by Create London. While based in Dagenham, she engaged with the area’s GRT communities and spent time researching their stories in the local archives. Her exhibition, Stranger in Silver Walking on Air, responds to the materiality of the building, filling every corner with elements that reflect the richness, complexity and resilience of GRT life.

Central to the installation is the theme of curtain-twitchers – suspicious busybodies who snoop on their neighbours. But Le Bas turns the concept on its head, incorporating curtains as a series of movable canvases for politically charged texts and paintings informed by her recent research and lived experience. As visitors move the curtains, they activate the space, revealing glimpses of often misunderstood and maligned narratives, as well as hidden canvases and mixed media works. The dreamlike environment is inhabited by the Stranger in Silver, a mysterious hooded woman in a silver dress and Air Max trainers who appears at various points throughout the house. Outside, the front lawn is populated by Le Bas’s impish “rubbish dolls” – eerie, makeshift figures with bin-bag bodies that speak to the sociopolitical structures that cause people to be seen as disposable or expendable.

Le Bas has long championed GRT creativity, with international presentations that include a presence at the 52nd and 58th Venice Biennales (in 2007 and 2019) and the Gwangju Biennale in 2012. She co-curated the first Roma Biennial in Berlin in 2018 and has had significant exhibitions in Vienna and Athens. The present exhibition is part of a recent wave of attention in the UK, following her 2024 Turner Prize nomination and solo show at Tramway, Glasgow.

Delaine Le Bas: Stranger in Silver Walking on Air
The White House, Dagenham, London
21 March – 27 September 2025

Interview by DAVID TRIGG
Filmed and edited by MARTIN KENNEDY