Zhuzh the Yog: 'Fanning the Flames'

Written by Zhuzh the Yog.

Stepping through the doors of the White House, Dagenham, takes you from the streets of the UK’s largest housing estate into a dreamlike installation by Romany artist and Turner Prize nominee Delaine Le Bas. Stranger in Silver, Walking on Air is an immersive experience: a dreamlike space of shifting layered imagery and text on translucent fabrics that circulate the room - shimmering, secretive, political, and otherworldly.

Delaine Le Bas has been in residence at the White House since March 21st, and each month she invites members of the Traveller/Gypsy/Roma community to take up residence in the front room.

Her current guests are the queer Traveller collective Zhuzh the Yog, who have installed an intimate curation of paintings, illustrations, photography, sculpture, and zines. Creating an exhibition-within-an-exhibition, Zhuzh the Yog’s work expands the immersive world of Le Bas’s installation through radical kinship and shared heritage.

Centre stage, a golden-eyed hobby horse waits to read your cards. ‘June’ by Percy Henderson presides over a reimagined tarot deck, each card hand-painted in vibrant colour. On the table, Ruari McClay’s opulent and detailed zine ‘Pearls of Wisdom’ stands open, imparting knowledge to those willing to turn its pages and beside it, Becky Buchanan’s ‘How the Deities Touched Me’ - a sumptuous pop-up book of collage and painting - erupts with colour. On the wall, Charlie Sanders mystical paintings beckon you into the deep green forest, while Bela Varadi’s documentary photographs invite you back to the yard.

This rich presentation of work speaks directly to the contradictions and expectations of what it is to be of the GTR community and queer, whilst thriving and surviving. It’s a curation of joyful resistance.

Reading Rebecca Wilde’s beautifully intricate diagram, ‘Yet We’re Still Dancing’ I’m confronted with the layered experience of living within the intersection of Queer and Traveller. It’s a tough read—and compares the high level of suicide in both communities, Yet close by, on the bookshelf sits Kai Fiáin’s proud re-imagining of the royal flush, which suggests there is nothing luckier than to be born a Mincéir, and beside it, Rebecca Couzen Gray’s My Little Pony, is quietly picketing to keep Appleby alive.

The front room is a luxurious treasure trove of detail and colour. As I wander around, I’m reminded of the beauty of the traditional vardo. I leave the exhibition with a heart in my hand, a gift from Percy Henderson - reminding me of the miracle I am.

Who Are Zhuzh the Yog?

"We are an artist collective, united by our shared intersecting identities of queerness and heritage in nomadic cultures. We comprise LGBTQI+ folks from Irish, Scottish, and English Traveller groups; Gypsy and Roma communities; New Age Travellers; boaters; bargees; and show people."

"What began as a small melting pot of like-minded queer Travellers making and creating, has quickly evolved into a vibrant community and collective, centred around identity and lived experiences."

"Our work is united by shared inspiration: spirituality, mysticism, horses, housing, rainbow colours, Gypsy futurism, and heritage crafts. We are thriving as artists with pride in our identities, and we can’t wait to show the world our vision for a nomadic future.

United, we are unstoppable."

How We Made It to the White House

"It all began with a residency at Queer Britain, a small radical museum based in north London. The residency was brought about by the collective efforts of Q.B programmer Nan Carreira, Percy Henderson from Traveller Pride, and academic Shaan Knan. It was during this residency that the bones of Zhuzh were laid.

From the very beginning, Percy and Shaan understood that this opportunity had to find a way to include disabled members, of which the travelling communities have many. And so, the residency became both digital and in person, allowing members with differing access needs to join and contribute."

"And it was cathartic as fuck - there is no other word for it. I have never felt an energy like that. There was a lot of imposter syndrome for everyone, because none of us felt like we were proper artists. Although some of the gang did have an artistic career before Zhuzh, the fact that from the very ground up it was built for our community and its needs, meant that it was a very revolutionary space. The space Queer Britain provided us changed our lives - for smaller or larger, it changed our lives."

"When we first stepped into Queer Britain, in person and virtually, for the Traveller+ Residency in 2024, it was not lost on us that this was a rare invitation—that maybe it was the first time this many LGBTQ+ Traveller+ people had been in the same room. Our imposter syndrome resounded off the walls. Would people take us seriously? Were we posh enough? Too working-class, too ethnically secretive? Too cluttered for this minimalist space?"

"Our communities are most often spoken about - in policy, in the press, in the academy - but rarely are we given the means to speak for ourselves, to archive our own stories, or to imagine our futures in public. It was an unsettling ride for a bunch of waltzers on our first day at the museum."

"The residency provided our foundling group a chance to explore the museum and create new work. But what really happened was a lot more radical. For the first time, many of us found ourselves in a space where our identities as LGBTQ+ Travellers were not contradictions, but catalysts. Some of us straight from the yard, others who have been bricks-and-mortar their whole lives, plus others with mixed heritage, and of course boaters and new travellers. In this Dutch pot of origins, we found ourselves immersed in a vivid, candid, and unexpected shared memory. No matter how different our experiences, we found our histories woven together by the same themes and motifs."

"Magic happened. For six weeks running, we would gather on a Saturday and problem-solve, bouncing ideas off each other. Over time we forged genuine bonds of family, connection, and understanding - a level of understanding that a lot of us had never really had before. It was like being able to breathe for the first time. I didn’t get demanded to explain everything. I just got to exist, and I got to create. Freely create, as well. We got a chance to explore such a wide range of art from the people involved I was constantly inspired. That’s when I fell in love with the group and felt like we couldn’t let this go. It became like this bee in my bonnet: no, we can’t let this go."

What’s in the Name?

"So we decided to carry this work forward together. We called ourselves ‘Zhuzh the Yog’ - the camp act of ‘zhuzhing’ (to spark, to make fabulous, a Romani word) with ‘yog,’ the Romani word for ‘fire.’ Fanning the flames, so to speak. It’s about survival, but also about refusing to be reduced to statistics or stereotypes. We zhuzh because our existence demands more than invisibility - it commands visibility."

"Todmorden was our next exhibition. Percy Henderson and Ruth Sullivan picked up the reins on that one. The Todmorden show went outstandingly well. Again, that opening day - seeing everyone be together in space again, not more than six months after the first one, and seeing the reaction from a small town to us—was powerful."

"I had almost convinced myself that we wouldn’t get that same reaction anywhere else outside London. Todmorden is this tiny little town in Yorkshire. Being up north was a big thing, as a lot of our group are from the north - we have a strong northern contingent within the group. And privately, a lot of us were worried about Todmorden, because growing up in the north as gay and a Traveller can be nerve-racking."

"But the beautiful, positive reaction from the Gorja community on the opening day of that show was like … at least for me, it was the first time I’d seen a mass amount of gawjie’s react positively to a group of us. Like, I’ve had positive reactions on an individual level - but a positive response to a group of us? That never happens. And yet, here we were, being celebrated."

"At this time, we were wondering how we would continue the momentum, and this was when Delaine approached Ruth offering us a space in her exhibition at the White House."

"So we had to just figure it out. This time Marnie took the reins, It was a big deal to be exhibiting with Delaine - never mind that she was a Turner Prize nominee, or anything like that. A community elder was sticking her neck out for us. So we had to give it the best we could."

"We were honoured to be invited by Delaine Le Bas, a Romani artist whose practice we have long admired, to the White House. To share space with her is not just an honour - it is an intergenerational, interdisciplinary dialogue. One that insists our stories belong in the centre of contemporary art, not its margins, or as outsider artists."

And so, for the next six months, Marnie, Percy, and Roo worked their asses off, delivering workshops and reaching more members of the community.

"Which was the point - to reach out to our community has always been the point."

"Working on the Delaine exhibition has been challenging and humbling. But it’s lit a fire under me, because now I want to get Zhuzh out into more community-focused spaces. And I want the people who need it to see our work - whether they are Traveller, whether they are queer, whether they are both, or neither, or just curious."

"I’m sick of seeing things written without us. Or things designed without us. Those are the people that need to see our work. They need to see the joy and the passion. And that’s one of the guiding principles of the whole thing: the joy.

Born out of the grief, born out of the horrors, born out of the trauma—but the joy of coming together, sitting around a yog, and just fannying about, zhuzhing the flames. That’s the point of it. That is exactly the point of it.

I will forever be grateful for the opportunity to show people what the fuck we are made of. What wonderfully beautiful, talented people our community has. And how rich, and deep, and free we can be. And how joy can be, you know?”

“While we celebrate, however, there are ongoing hostilities faced by Traveller+ communities in the UK, Ireland, and Europe. Our presence in museums and galleries does not undo the evictions, the racist policing, or the political scapegoating that continues daily.

What it does offer is a counter-archive - a reminder that we exist not only in the state’s paperwork or the media’s moral panics, but in art, in joy, in self-fashioning.”

“The residency at Queer Britain gave us a glimpse of ourselves reflected back with dignity. Now, as Zhuzh the Yog, we’re pushing that reflection further - into the White House, into the art world, into every space that has pretended we do not belong.”

"We zhuzh. And we are the fire."

Zhuzh the Yog Collective (Invi Brenna; Becky Buchanan; Rebecca Jayne Couzens Gray; Holli Dillon; Kai Fiáin; Percy Henderson; Roo McClay; Charlie Sanders; Ruth Sullivan; Béla Váradi; Marnie Wood and Rebecca Wilde)