Artpaper. #19

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G A L L E RY R Gallery opens in the heart of Sliema

EXH IBIT ION Matthew Schembri and Thomas Scerri showcase work on intermediate states

S POT L IGH T Ivorian realities expressed into dreams of the future

€2.00 WHERE SOLD

No:19

+ S A M VA S S A L L O

Start a Revolution from your bed Pleasure is power. It’s therefore no surprise that it has been weaponized into a tool of social shame and oppression. It’s a phenomenon that is not exclusive but definitely visible in Malta’s conservative rooting. Fresh out of art school, Maltese visual artist and activist Emma Grima explores the the power of pleasure in a thoughtprovoking body of work called The Vulva Monologues. Artpaper’s editor Sam Vassallo caught up with the artist to speak about the project and her career. >> Pg. 24

E R I C A G I U S TA

ARTIFICIAL ORIGINALITY:

Emma Grima,Women reclining >> pg.24

HOW AN AI PLATFORM CAN REVOLUTIONISE CREATIVE PROCESSES

ART NEWS Death, drugs and stolen art around the world poor people

GERMANY The millionaire who painted

FUTURE ART What does the future hold for art in a world driven by artificial intelligence?

EXHIBITION Tonio Mallia’s dystopia when beauty succumbs to war exciting exploration of pleasure

INTERVIEW Emma Grima’s

LOCAL The vibrant and no filter watercolours of Debbie Caruana Dingli

REVIEW A night at the Grandmaster’s Palace EVENTS Art events on the island and beyond

FILM Celebrating 100 years of Pasolini

If you are wondering why your social media feeds have suddenly become populated with an unusual amount of evocative artistic images, it’s because sophisticated AIgenerated contents are now accessible to anyone with a bit of curiosity, an electronic device and an internet connection. >> Architecture, pg. 27

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Welcome / Team / Inside September - October 2022

Editor Sam Vassallo (+356) 9902 2398 Graphic Designer Nicholas Cutajar Managing Director Lily Agius (+356) 9929 2488 info@artpaper.press Sales Person Katherine Maj (+356) 9917 5888 Printing Press Print It Contributors Giulia Privitelli Charlene Vella Vince Briffa Ates Orga Erica Giusta Christine Xuereb Seidu Gabriele Spiller Sam Vassallo Emma Grima Thomas Scerri Matthew Schembri Debbie Caruana Dingli Joanna Delia Francesca Zammit Mark Sullivan Julien Vinet Amer Wahoud Nicholas Cutajar Lily Agius Tonio Mallia Dreweatts

Supported by Artemis Babel Bistro CO-MA Edwards Lowell Lily Agius Gallery Marie Gallery 5 No 43 People & Skin Sunday in Scotland Tico Tico Vee Gee Bee Art Zigumar Art Galleries .

MUZA Valletta Contemporary Marie5 Gallery Christine X Malta The Venice Biennale Society of Arts Malta The Neau Nationalgalerie Berlin Spazju Kreattiv, Malta Green Shutters, Malta R Gallery Museum of Contemporary Cultures Adama Toungara Legion of Honour Museum, San Francisco Musee Matisse Germaldegalerie Berlin MoMa, New York

Endless Journey, Tonio Mallia >> pg.10

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fter rolling days of basking sun, Summer is slowly drifting to sleep for another year. It has been a season with resemblance to pre-isolation times, a distant cousin to the racing-paced lives we lived prepandemic. But the past is the past and can never return. In the release of covid-19’s chokehold, we arm ourselves with hope and imaginations to envision alternative futures, whether pleasure-driven, dystopian or AI-generated, art is a tool that creates visions of what could be.

ponders a bleaker version of the future. Architect Erica Giusta writes about the questions surfacing now that AI-powered art has landed in the hands and screens of the public. Meanwhile, Christine Xuereb Seidu explains how Ivorian artists are using their work to imagine future realities and their places in them.

The rest you’ll have to discover and read in the following pages.

Enjoy!

In this issue of Artpaper, young artist Emma Grima speaks about the radical power of bodily autonomy and pleasure can change our lives, while Giulia Privitelli’s review of Tonio Mallia’s work

EXHIBITIONS + EVENTS 05. FILM Celebrating 100 years of Pasolini 31. BIENNALE Ivorian artists showcase their work to the world 36. EVENTS Must-see exhibits around the world 38. LOCAL Up-coming exhibits in Malta

INTERVIEWS + REVIEWS 10. ART REVIEW Tonia Mallia’s dystopian paintings 13. LOCAL The loud and proud of Maltese culture captured in vibrant watercolours 16. REVIEW Two local artists work from the “In-between” 18. MUSIC A night at the Grand Palace 24. INTERVIEW Pleasure and power with artist Emma Grima 27. AI How an AI Platform can revolutionise creativity 33. GERMANY Celebrating Max Liebermann’s paintings

Next issue this October

ART NEWS

Advertising + Editorial + Information: Lily Agius - (+356) 9929 2488 - info@artpaper.press

07. ART MARKET Priceless stolen works uncovered around the world

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22. PORCELAIN From the renowned collection of Anthony Rothchild

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News / Malta / Pop-Up Gallery / Cinema September - October 2022 MALTA

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A NEW POP-UP CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY OPENS IN SLIEMA

new pop-up contemporary art gallery in Tigne Street, Sliema will open this September, offering a place to exhibit and experiment for local and international artists. R Gallery, run by architect Mark Sullivan, is first and foremost an homage to its patrons Peter and Liliana Ripard, with a scope of contributing a space for recreational display. The building itself is an Art Deco edifice built at the turn of the 20th century, used as a place of sanctuary for British military personnel who were stationed in Malta during the Second World War. The pop-up gallery, grounded by Corinthian columns and gargoyles, has now been revisited and transformed into a raw, rich structure for art-makers and practitioners to experiment, display and contribute to the multi-faceted art scene on the island. French artist Julien Vinet will be spearheading the opening with a show introducing his new body of work on the 22nd of September.

MALTA

Celebrating a century of cinema legend Pasolini

Pasolini 100 is a worldwide endeavour, celebrating 100 years since Pier Paolo Pasolini’s birth with two nights of lectures of screenings of the master’s works.

This free event, taking place on the 7th and 8th September, is being organised by the Department of Italian, the Master of Arts in Film Studies of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Malta, in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute in Valletta. It will take place in the beautiful settings of the Bibjoteka National Library.

The project is co-sponsored by Shadeena Entertainment Ltd, Sajjetta, Kukumajsa Productions Ltd, Falkun Films and Nizza Films and is being curated by Francesca Zammit.

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SAM VASSALLO is a Maltese journalist, writer and artist based in Berlin.

News / Stolen Art September - October 2022

S A M VA S S A L L O

DRUGS, DEATH AND STOLEN ART The art world is a dynamic place, far removed from quiet spectators rubbing their chins at sparkling galleries. In August, two major artworks were rightfully retrieved by authorities across the world, while a feminist Polish pioneer has sadly passed away.

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Brazilian artwork worth a staggering $59.1 million was discovered under the bed in an Ipanema beach house, after a sweeping police investigation into a group of stolen works.

The major work is called Sol Poente (Setting Sun) by Tarsila do Amaral, one of Brazil’s most prominent and important modern artists. It is one of 16 paintings found on the 11th of August, which are estimated to be worth 709 million reias ($139 million), not counting stolen jewellery or cash found.

The mastermind behind this art heist, according to police, was the daughter of an 82-year-old woman, Genevieve Boghici, who was once married to Jean Boghici, a late Brazilian dealer who acquired a significant collection of art throughout his life.

Police detailed how the con woman allegedly used a clairvoyant to convince

Photo: Courtesy of wikicommons

Pablo Picasso. Photo: Courtesy of wikicommons

her mother that she was sick and must cough up a series of payments as a sort of “spiritual redemption” through an Afro-Brazilian priestess. Eventually Boghici became suspicious and tried to stop making payments, and was confined to her home where she was beaten and robbed.

Sol Poente (Setting Sun), completed in 1929, is a beautiful and historically-weighted work. It is a solid example of how do Amaral fused elements of European modernism with styles inspired

by Brazilian vernacular art. It featured in her major 2018 Museum of Modern Art retrospective. It comes to no surprise then, that when Sol Poente was uncovered from the bed frame of a Brazilian beach house, one person caught on video was heard saying “Fucking hell!” in Portuguese.

This is not the first of his works to be stolen. Last year, Picasso’s “Head of a Woman” was recovered by Greek police after nearly a decade since it was stolen during a museum heist. In 2019, his “Portrait of Dora Maar” was discovered by a Dutch art detective after 20 years since it was stolen off a yacht of a Saudi sheikh in the South of France. In May, a portrait of Picasso’s lover and mother of one of his children called “Femme nue couchée” sold at auction for $67.5 million.

Just a week later, a painting believed to be done by the famous artist Picasso was discovered during a high-profile drug raid in Iraq. Like the Tarsila do Amaral painting, it is estimated to be worth millions.

While we applaud these retrieved masterpieces, August has also brought the sad news of the passing of Polish feminist artist, Natalia LL. Natalia Lach-Lachowicz, known as Natalia LL, was a conceptual artist and image maker who was active and influential in the avant-garde scene in Poland in the 1960s and 70s.

According to the government-run Iraqi News Agency (INA), the allegedly stolen work was found after three people were arrested on suspicion of trade and transportation of narcotic drugs in the Diyala province in central-eastern Iraq.

Details about the authenticity of the painting are yet to be released.

Pablo Picasso, known for his essential contribution to the Cubist movement, is one of the world’s most known artists, producing over 13,500 paintings, 100,000 prints and engravings as well as hundreds of sculptures and ceramic works during his nearly 80-year career.

Natalia LL left a multi-faceted and rich body of work, including an erotic and satirical series that questions how women were passively portrayed in TV, print and advertising. Consumer Art (19721975), one of her most defining works, presents models delighting in phallus foods like bananas, sausages and icecream cones and serves to counter the male gaze in consumerism. Through her bold explorations of the “the second sex” , LL left a permanent mark on global feminism and is widely celebrated today. Rest in power, Natalia.

Natalia LL, Post-consumer Art, 1975, colour photograph on paper, 50.5 x 60.5 cm, the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow (MOCAK)

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News / Malta / Library September - October 2022 MALTA

A LIBRARY AS A FORM OF EXPRESSION Edwards Lowell’s latest edition, the Edwards Lowell Book Store, is building on a strength they have seen in their Portomaso Boutique, a twostorey, multi-functional shopping experience that includes an art gallery, champagne bar, high-end library and displays of the finest watches and jewellery on the market. With the launch of the shop on Zachary Street in Valletta, they are putting luxury books into the limelight.

Despite the increase in digital technologies that are changing the way we digest information, the global book market is expected to expand by 1.9% to $164.22bn by 2030 according to a report by Grand View Research Inc. Nothing compares to the feeling of a good book in your hands, and we want to showcase our favourite volumes in a space that’s comfortable, personal, and unique. While public and university libraries are often vast and full of splendour, home libraries are more intimate (but not any less gorgeous). The room can be formal and elegant or colourful and cosy, and stylish focal points like a fireplace, desk, or snug sitting area keep things just as interesting as the volumes on the shelves.

For most of us, books are a source of pleasure, telling great stories through words or images, but a well-curated library is more than just solving a storage problem, it is an expression of luxury, art, and culture.

The Edwards Lowell Book Store is the latest addition to their growing iniatives. Not only are they selling high-end coffee table books, but they are also assisting with the curation of libraries for hotels, residences, private offices and more. With 97 years at the forefront of the luxury watch and fine jewellery business in Malta, representing brands like Rolex, Patek-Philippe and

Cartier, Edwards Lowell have experience in quality, style, and attention to detail. This gives them a unique outlook when curating both personal and corporate libraries for their clients, addressing individual needs.

The idea behind curating a personalised library is to create the most beautiful and sophisticated space that will enable people to unplug and enjoy the moment and this is why every project is one-of-a-kind. The unique design seeks to include a variety of genres while adding decorations to the library space, such as rare statues and sculptures — objects that help take guests on a visual journey and add conceptual depth to the library.

Also available from the Elcol website, the Edwards Lowell Book Store offers a vast selection of perfectly bound, attractively presented books on art, fashion, photography, travel and lifestyle, books of the highest quality with distinctive graphic identity and editorial savoir-faire, including those from high quality publishers, Assouline and Taschen. These books are not simply words and pictures, but experiences which unfold as you turn the pages.

The Assouline publishing house is the gold standard for luxury fashion and lifestyle books, chronicling the history of everything from the house of Chanel to Coca-Cola to

the Carlyle Hotel, with Alex Assouline introducing a service to design private libraries to the company.

The Assouline Collection lies side by side with another worldfamous publisher – Taschen, a publisher that has become synonymous with accessible, eclectic publishing. From affordable Basic Art series to highly collectible limited editions, Taschen specialises in illustrated publications on a range of themes including art, architecture, design, film, photography, pop culture, and lifestyle.

A private library is more than just a way to organise your books; it’s an expression of character and a symbol of style. Adding what can be nothing less than art pieces by both Assouline and Taschen – hand-bound books using traditional techniques, with colour plates hand-tipped on art-quality paper, will lift your spaces from simple bookshelves to a library that expresses who you really are.

The books at Edwards Lowell Book Store are ones you can judge by their cover!

50, Zachary Steet, Valletta; T: 2568 3070; E: info@elcol.com; W: www.elcol.com

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News / Interview / New Boutique in Sliema September - October 2022 MALTA

THE DECADENT LUXURY OF FINE LIFE AND CHOCOLATE

New boutique opens in Sliema

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he phrase “attention to detail” may have gained the status of a buzzword, but at Sunday in Scotland, it is a true centering raison d’être. From the custom clad interior design to the charming cakes brought to life by Creative Director Amer Wahoud, everything alludes to careful craftsmanship.

Wahoud, the founder and creator of Sunday in Scotland, has forged a rivetingly fresh way to experience the decadent luxury of fine life and chocolate. The entrepreneur, artist and chocolatier’s eco-conscious, zero-waste and handcrafted boutique stands to be a benchmark of lifestyle brands worldwide.

blue of the signage outside, to the material choice of the chairs’ cushions, to the bold combinations of the artisanal flavors and textures of the cakes, reflects this.

After establishing the flagship boutique store in the heart of the capital, Wahoud has a lot planned for Sunday in Scotland, bringing the concept to multiple other popular locations on the island.

Experience Sunday in Scotland: visit the boutique on 173 St Lucy Street, Valletta, Malta International Airport, and The Strand in Sliema, and check out their website at sundayinscotland.com

“This isn’t simply a café or shop - it’s a chocolate boutique, a whole experience within itself. Everything is natural, bespoke and genuine. There’s layers behind all the fine details,” Wahoud explained, when asked about what makes Sunday in Scotland stand out.

“I take inspiration from my love of art and craftsmanship, the dedication to the work, the passionate in process as well as the final item.”

The proof is in the luxury pudding. Entering the boutique on a slanting hill of Valletta is to feel an immediate sense of serenity. It is to enter a place forged for nostalgic beauty and allurement of the senses. Everything from the ethereal

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News / Exhibition / Malta / Tonio Mallia September - October 2022 MALTA

GIULIA PRIVITELLI

BELLOUM IN MUNDUM: When Beauty Succumbs To War A new series of paintings by Tonio Mallia reimagines a world shaken beyond its tipping point, where the tensions between the human and natural world are no longer at play, and beauty has devolved into war.

Endless Journey

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he world is going through a crisis not unlike that experienced by an entire post-war generation over a century ago, the disillusion and sterility of which cling to the haunting verses of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. The poem, which turns a hundred this year, offers, in one critic’s analysis, ‘a vision of desolation and spiritual drought’, and exhales, according to another, a ‘sigh for the vanished glory of the past’, encompassing the ‘plight of the whole generation’, as yet another commentator puts it. A hundred years on, these unheeded utterances have found their way . into the Camerone at MUZA, Valletta, where they hang about ominously, full of dread, announcing the foreboding ethos of a series of new paintings by Tonio Mallia in an exhibition called Bellum in Mundum.

Tonio’s previous offering to the public, however, presented a very different view of the world, as if in its primordial days of creation and habitation. For seven years, the artist receded from view, while the world evolved according to its natural order and entrusted all to the human race. Now, in the eighth year, nature trembles at its tipping point— its dying point—rebelling violently, pleading and yearning to be cleansed of the cancer that plagues its beautiful body: the land, the air, and the seas. We have instead a terrible face, grimacing at mankind—the cause and victim of the unprecedented war it wages on the world, and which nature knows is final.

So, what happened to mankind that it should forget its place as steward of the world and, as it were, of itself—that bello (beauty) should succumb to bellum (war)?

Waterworld

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GIULIA PRIVITELLI holds an M.A. in History of Art, and is presently Assistant Editor at Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti. She is also a freelance writer, regularly contributing culture-related articles to various local newspapers, magazines and blogs.

To be sure, there is still beauty in the world, and it often surfaces and dwells in places which are hardly of note: nature will always be able to surprise, to instil an indescribable and ungraspable sense of awe, and humanity, too, is still capable of producing works of immense beauty, of being a cause of beauty. And yet, we know only too well the innumerable lives nature has claimed, and the immeasurable damage man has inflicted upon the world, gradually turning it into a wasteland and, indeed, discarding one another as if they themselves are made of waste. Despite all the beauty man can create and offer, history shows us in many tragic ways – the holocaust, Chernobyl, the exodus of all asylum seekers – that man is just as capable of the greatest brutalities and horrors ever witnessed or heard of. It is precisely this tension which plays across the surfaces of Tonio’s paintings in Bellum in Mundum, the same tension which troubles

Death as imagined in Zusak’s The Book Thief, perplexed as he is by humanity, by ‘how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, its words and stories so damning and brilliant’. Here is the interplay between beauty and war, between creating and erasing, building and dismantling, staying and fleeing, dying and living, that haunts and unsettles the beholder, victims of their own crimes.

Every day offers a memory of something that is no longer there: a place, a person, a moment. In August alone, we remember the thousands of Sinti and Roma murdered in Nazi-occupied Europe, and the millions stripped of their dignity and life under tyrannical regimes; we remember the barbaric atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the toxic smoke that spread and the rain which poured death instead of life; we remember the families forced to separate and flee, as they still do now, pushed out

of their homes because of another toxin that always threatens to poison the human heart; we remember, too, those who sought a freedom, to fight back and not abandon that fragile thing called hope.

And so it may be, in nature as in the world of man, that life marches through the dry and arid grounds, through the stench of rot and the fragile, cracked earth, so as to give witness to it and will that a new beginning might emerge from the detritus and mistakes that have been made.

‘Bellum in Mundum’ will be on show at the Camerone, MUZA . – The National Community Art Museum, Valletta, until the 11th of September. www. muza.mt

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News / Exhibtion / Debbie Caruana Dingli September - October 2022 MALTA

CHARLENE VELLA

US MALTESE For anyone passionate about their art or craft, a long stretch of time away from that art form feels like an eternity, fingers starting to itch to create. That absence proves how important their art is to them, and that the urge to create is utterly pure and strong, and very much a necessity. This was very much the case for Debbie Caruana Dingli and the creation of the present collection of watercolours.

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ebbie Caruana Dingli’s first solo exhibition was held in 1985 and she has not stopped painting or exhibiting her work since, having exhibited her work in Malta and internationally also in collective exhibitions. One of her self-portraits dating to 1985 is exhibited at Malta’s National Fine Arts Museum in .

Valletta, MUZA, and she was the 23rd artist selected for Bank of Valletta’s retrospective exhibition in 2015, the first female to have a retrospective exhibition dedicated to her artistic career.

Caruana Dingli is a prolific and prominent exponent of contemporary art in Malta being especially relevant for her

sensitivity to socio-political issues of which she is vociferous, even through her art. She, however, also focuses on her own reality, as was the case with her solo exhibition ‘Facing Myself’ held in 2018 after a car accident that took place in 2016.

The starting point for this present collection stemmed from doodles that were created very naturally and unwittingly

by Caruana Dingli at a worrying time.

These doodles, executed with a biro and paper that were easily available to her, were a form of release, a release from a particularly stressful moment from which Debbie Caruana Dingli needed to escape, even if fleetingly.

Selfie

Debbie Caruana Dingli later came to realise that amongst these doodles there emerged a very strong Maltese element; this was the start of her next project and the theme of her next solo exhibition, her last one being a large collection of oil paintings on an overlooked aspect of motherhood held in Valletta between April and May 2021 titled ‘Nothing Really Matters’.

And therefore, this exhibition of watercolours executed in the last few months titled ‘The Cappuccino Brigade’ being held at The Phoenicia Malta’s Palm Court Lounge and curated by Dr Charlene Vella, is Debbie Caruana Dingli’s ninth solo exhibition and each painting is based on her observations of us, the native Maltese population.

Her talent for painting is indisputable.

She is an astute portraitist and renowned watercolorist, Caruana Dingli also reveals her keen sense of observation in her quirky, clever and witty cartoon-like paintings that share traits that are unique to Caruana Dingli.

Each of her paintings tells a story in a simple and effective way. They are, of course, exaggerations of reality with amplified features and gestures, and which are very much based on actuality. What comes across is what to her and many

of us Maltese, is a truly Maltese identity, warts and all, sometimes literally.

The paintings are executed with fluid wet-on-wet or alla prima watercolour technique that is very unforgiving, above which are multiple drawn lines in sections of the composition which focus our attention on the story being told.

These lines in ink reveal the flurry of activity with which these paintings were executed, with Caruana Dingli being at that moment completely lost in her work.

She employs a vibrant palette for these compositions which goes very well with the theme of the Maltese who can be very loud and proud: just look at the title piece of the exhibition. This is not to say that there aren’t more sombre and poignant paintings included in this collection, such as The Wedding Photo.

There is bound to be something that we, Maltese, will associate with, giggle or even laugh at, and for foreigners to get to know us colourful Maltese better.

Debbie Caruana Dingli’s exhibition ‘The Cappuccino Brigade’ will be open throughout the month of September at The Palm Court Lounge, The Phoenicia Malta.

The Communion Procession

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Review /Malta / Exhibition September - October 2022 MALTA

V I N C E B R I F FA

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Photos: Etienne Farrell #KitzKlikz

s I write this essay on a extremely hot afternoon in July of 2022, the general feeling in Malta is similar to the one in most of the countries around the world; that of business as usual.

The everyday seems unhampered by the ghostly memories of the months spent in mandatory lockdown, an absurd and apprehensive reality that was brought about by the strong clasp of a virus whose presence we have now learnt to incorporate in our day-to-day.

Still, Malta is experiencing yet another spike in confirmed COVID-19 pandemic cases, the numbers of which have now exceeded a hundred and eleven thousand1 since those first reported at the beginning of March of 2020, bringing with them a death toll of over seven hundred and eighty people to date.

At present, Malta has the highest virus positivity rate in the EU, at more than 40%2. Such information, which used to be somewhat worrying only months ago, has become just another unheeding statistic which wades in the overflow of daily information coming our way.

Today, we have adjusted pretty well to living in two parallel realities, where we both wear and don’t wear a protective mask, with such a decision at times dictated by the requisites of place and circumstance. However, a totally unconnected consideration has become a key player in the decision-making process of mask-wearing and needs to be factored into the analysis of such an important act. As society continually shapes us and conditions the way we view our face and body image, the decision of wearing a mask or not is also swayed by our individual sense of perceptive aesthetics, or rather, on how we prefer others to perceive our face; factually or open to imagination, real or perceived. Scientific studies in psychology have shown that in the case of vision, a phenomenon termed Amodal Completion3 influences such a decision and skews one into deciding to protect the face to conform to a perceived aesthetic rather than to observe proven scientific procedure.

According to the SAGE Encyclopedia of Perception, Amodal Perception is the perception of information that is common or redundant across multi-

ple senses (e.g., auditory, visual, tactile). Amodal information includes changes along three basic parameters of stimulation—time, space, and intensity.4 Therefore, it follows that our perceptual system is able to represent, or better imagine, those parts of the person (object or scene) that we do not see, and therefore in the case of a masked person, the person’s whole face is completed amodally, as informed by the viewer’s perceptive baggage. This phenomenon acts at the threshold of fact and fabrication and is in many ways similar to the central space of artistic encounter, a liminal space for meaning-making between the artist and the viewer and mediated through the artwork.

Since such processes rely on two entities for meaning-making to happen, interaction is not only dependent on the artist creating the perfect space for dialogue, but also on the activation of such dialogue by the viewer’s action. Therefore, mediation is really their prerogative.

Without such activity in-between the

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World Health Organisation, Country Statistics, https://covid19.who.int/region/euro/country/mt Times of Malta, 20 July, 2022, https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/maltas-covid-19-death-rate-highest-eu.969412 Bence Nanay, The Importance of Amodal Completion in Everyday Perception, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6083800/ 4 Sage Reference, Encyclopedia of Perception, https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/perception/n18.xml 2 3

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Review /Malta / Exhibition September - October 2022 MALTA Continued

artist, the work and the viewer, nothing happens and the work remains inert in the spatial limbo of its existence.

As the exhibition’s curator, I have approached the work proposed by the two young artists for the exhbition In-Between from a stand that entertains the notion of this sentient gap (that is housed between the mask and the face) as a metaphor for the constricted breach of visual art practice, that is as the in-between gap sundering the germination of concept and its final exposition, an activity that transforms itself from the incubatory space of the studio to the heterotopic openness of the exhibition hall. These spaces of thinking and doing which contemporaneously shift between the actual and the virtual, act similarly to the enclosure brought about by parenthesis in a sentence, an afterthought designed to reflect back on the journey of the works from its beginning to its end. Therefore, my intention is for these works to be the space that activates such a mediation from a myriad of

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levels, becoming a conduit for making meaning of our contemporary condition.

In-Between is an exhibition that focuses on intermediate states, connecting and alternately separating such dualities such as life and death, presence and absence, the visible and the hidden, and the tangible and the intangible amongst many others. The two young Maltese artists, winners of the Shifting Contexts competition in 2018 organised

by Agenzija Zghazagh in collaboration . . . with Spazju Kreattiv and curated by Dr. Trevor Borg, have largely conceptualised the two bodies of work presented in the exhibition in the restraint of the personal void of lockdown, uncertain if the work will ever be exhibited and far removed from the normal custom where site specificity is usually factored into the creative process. Both artists have therefore had to renegotiate their installations not only from a spatial dimension, and a temporal one in the case of Matthew Schembri, in line with the ever-changing statistics of the COVID-19

Art and Popular Culture, Cognitive Dissonance, http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Cognitive_dissonance

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pandemic in Malta.

Thomas Scerri’s body of sculptural work challenges our amodal properties through a process that zones in on the limen of fact and fabrication as it acts on resolutions at the thresholds of matter and material. Materja is a body of sculptural work that metaphorically resides in the constricted space between the mask and the face and reflects on the in-between state through intentional material ambiguity. The artist hides the metal sculptures behind fabric and challenges us to consciously experience the form from its evanescent silhouette, cutting us off from any visual truth and denying any likelihood of activating our amodal faculties. Scerri consciously suspends the works in a multitude of layers of uncertainty, provoking their conceptual reading and challenging our meaning-making structures through an exacted strategy of ambivalence. His masked, inert forms defy gravity and hang in mid-air to conceptually allude to the void that follows the transience of

life, suspended in the abyss of the hereafter. Through their display aesthetics, these shrouds, silently draped in their own veiled uncertainty, boldly question the boundaries between painting and sculpture.

Through a deliberately unsettling process, Thomas positions the viewer in a state of anxiety. Planned lighting suggests our spatial understanding of the combined mixture of materials, plays with our perceptions, and invites us to only make sense of their form through our own visual perception. Like a modesty screen, the veiling material cuts into the shared space between us and the work, impending further approach while paradoxically luring us into its uncomfortable, suggestive embrace. There is an uncanny quality in Scerri’s works, as we are placed in an an uncomfortable state of cognitive dissonance5; we are suspended between what we hold to be true and what we know to be true, triggering a Lacanian notion of uncertainty, of not being able to distinguish the

There is a sense of the uncanny in the work what you left behind, as it is with us, present, but yet, does not make its appearance known through the faculty of any of our senses. Spread between two different spaces, what you left behind creates panic in the mind of the viewer as soon as they are in the second room, when they realise that the more than seven hundred and fifty glasses infected by human touch, can not only be potentially virus-infected, forcing us to rethink our age-old formats of hospitality, social entertainment and societal engagement. The work is a true wakeup call to the realisation that there is another world far removed from our faculties of vision, a realm inhabited by invisible invaders that wreak havoc on our bodies and could potentially kill us.

terrible from the sublime, uncertain if the exhibits repel or draw us into their mysterious gulf. Materja’s uncertainty does not emanate from what is evident nor does it come from what is completely unknown; it is brought about by what is suggested, by the anxiety of what we project onto what could possibly be encountered.

A similar concern on the anxiety of the unknown is shared by Matthew Schembri’s installation what you left behind, an installation which focuses on the way we perceive virus contagion. The work appropriates traces of evidence of social engagement through fingerprints and other marks that visitors leave on wine glasses when departing the art exhibition space after the opening night. In a quasi-forensic fashion, the work uncovers a world hidden from our sight and only made manifest through ultraviolet light. Similar to Scerri’s installation, what you left behind makes us imagine what is not visually evident, as it shockingly unearths the hidden world of the transmission and infection of a virus through touch, and the perils at stake when we make social contact with others during public occasions. what you left behind is both a performance and an installation. It uses the vernissage of the same work as a superspreading event to bring to our attention our vulnerability to what we do not see. Those invited to the exhibition’s opening are given wine in glasses that are partly covered in a chemical powder that is not visible to the naked eye. This acts as agent to make the guests’ fingerprints on the glasses visible, which, when emptied, are placed on UV-lit racks which line the adjoining exhibition space. The glasses are a living testimony to the multiple perils of virus transmission through human touch and become a meta-

Both Materja and what you left behind heavily rely on light to tease out alternative meanings of our universal truths. They use different qualities of light as metaphors for the metaphysical abstractions of existence, life and death.

Similar to Blumenberg’s philosophic musings on light in his essay Light as a Metaphor for Truth (1957)7, the use of light in the exhibition is intrusive; in its abundance, it creates the overwhelming, conspicuous clarity with which the truth “comes forth”. In Blumenberg’s own words, In-Between uses light as the absolute power of Being, which reveals the paltriness [Nichtigkeit] of the dark, which can no longer exist once light has come into existence. phor for the ever-increasing number of COVID-19-pandemic-related deaths on the island.

As we increasingly return to whatever we describe as normality, in search of an unrestrained, full life, one cannot but help but think about how viruses chal-

lenge our concept of what living means through their uncanny state; in abeyance between the living and non-living, they cannot replicate on their own but can do so in truly living cells. Furthermore, they can profoundly affect their hosts’ behaviour6.

One hopes that the viewer in this exhibition is touched by the light and finds some truth in its suggestive illumination.

6

Scientific American, Are Viruses Alive? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-viruses-alive-2004/ Hans Blumenberg, Light as a Metaphor for Truth: At the Preliminary Stage of Philosophical Concept Formation, in David Kleinberg-Levin (ed.), Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision. The University of California Press. pp. 30--62 (1993)

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Review /Malta / Music September - October 2022 MALTA

AT E S O R G A

AT THE GRAND MASTER’S PALACE MUSIC FOR A WHILE A Maltese feuilleton No.19__ Artpaper / 018

ATES ORGA is an award-winning British writer and record producer. Author of several books, including widely translated biographies of Beethoven and Chopin, he has collaborated with a number of eminent Maltese musicians and artists, from Charles Camilleri to more recently pianist Charlene Farrugia and composer Karl Fiorini. www.atesorga.com

M

Photos: Semih Okmen

onday 26th, 8 o’clock. April 1841. Chopin gives a semi-private recital at 22 rue de Rochechouart, an elite circle of aristocracy, friends, and pupils awaiting him. “In two hours of two-handed clapping,’ we are told, ‘he pocketed six thousand and several hundred francs amidst ovations, encores and the stamping of the most beautiful women in Paris’. Liszt, who the day before had been playing the Emperor with Berlioz, took up his pen, contributing a review to La Gazette Musicale, focussing less on the music, more the glamour, social air and atmosphere of the occasion. “The salons of Monsieur Pleyel,” he reported, “were brilliantly lit; a ceaseless stream of carriages deposited at the foot of the steps, carpeted and decked with fragrant flowers, the most elegant ladies, the most fashionable young men, the most famous artists, the richest financiers, the most illustrious lords, the élite of society - a complete aristocracy of birth, wealth, talent and beauty.

An open grand piano was on the platform; crowding around, people vied for the closest seats; composing themselves in anticipation, they would not miss a chord, a note, an intention, a thought of him who was about to sit there ...”

lenging black ghonnella, kissing the mosaics, sweeping the stepped streets beyond, time-warping us to another age. A kaleidoscope of nationalities and cultures. Maltese, Danish, Albanian, French, Turkish, colonial British, Faroese, Italian, Sicilian, Irish, Russian. Hot ... sea wind … a waxing gibbous moon sailing the sky.

Music frames the speeches and presentations. In the Throne Room, surrounded by D’Aleccio’s images of Knights and Ottomans, of a place on a rock nearer Africa than Europe where “people swear in Arabic but pray in church” (Liam Gauci), Clare Ghigo (mezzo-soprano) and Anne Marie Camilleri Podesta (harp) open with a group of late Renaissance/early Baroque songs intrinsically in keeping with the history and ambience of the setting. Frescobaldi’s ‘Se l’aura spira’, Caccini’s ‘Amarilli mia bella’, Purcell’s ‘Music for a while’, and the anonymous French ‘El baxel esta en la playa’ published in 1609.

Familiar numbers but beautifully done and elegantly staged, Clare Ghigo bringing a rich dark glow to the music, her liquid voice in an artistically special place these days.

Friday 10th, 7.30. June 2022. In limestone Valletta for a brief forty-eight hours, that long ago soirée, shades of the handsome immoral Liszt not yet thirty, fever and adoration in the air, curiously drugs my mind. I find myself drawn into a fairy tale bejewelled among the galleries, state rooms and courtyards of the Grand Master’s Palace, built in the 16th century and renovated in the 18th, a survivor (largely) of the Axis destruction rained upon Malta during the Second World War – the Royal Opera House at the other end of Republic Street wasn’t so fortunate. Co-chaired by Joanna Delia (People & Skin, Sliema), Wilfred Kenely (CEO, Research, Innovation and Development Trust [RIDT], University of Malta) and .

Sarah-Lee Zammit (NoceMuskata, Valletta), academics from the University’s Department of Conservation and Built Heritage and Heritage Malta in support, the evening has a serious purpose. Funding the preservation of Matteo Perez D’Aleccio’s Great Siege wall paintings commissioned by the Order of St John and executed between 1575 and 1581 – a remarkable series of twelve extant panels documenting in narrative sequence the Siege of 1565 when, Christendom confronting Islam, the Knights Hospitaller repelled Süleyman the Magnificent (as Vienna had done earlier in 1529). Prior to settling in Peru, D’Aleccio, apprenticed to Michelangelo, was prominent among Mediterranean Catholic circles, working on the Sistine Chapel before reaching Valletta.

Peopling the marble stairs, gracing the long, high-ceiling corridors guarded by suits of silent armour, laughter and wine never far away, radiance and society is on display. Dresses of silk and satin. Boots of black, waistcoats of red. A throat-clasping, pearl-adorned white creation that might have come out of Anna Karenina or St Petersburg 1905, worn by a young Muscovite of balletic allure, every toss of the wrist a speaking arabesque. Luke Azzopardi’s voluminously chal-

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Review /Malta / Music September - October 2022 MALTA Continued

Anne Marie Camilleri Podesta’s interluding, mellifluous of tone and phrasing, proves as pleasing as it is unexpected.

‘Two Castanet Dances of the Maltese’, ‘A Mask-Ball Dance of the Maltese’ and ‘A Maltese Jig’ from Edward Jones’s Terpsichore’s Banquet (circa 1813: Malta became a British Crown Colony on July 23rd that year, Samuel Taylor Coleridge no less having earlier been Acting Public Secretary, 1804-05, with an office in what’s now the Casino Maltese, steps away from the Palace.) Extravagantly admired, the Welsh harpist Edward Jones (1752-1824) was bard to George IV. In an age with a mania for ‘national airs’, drawing the likes of Haydn, Pleyel and Beethoven (copiously so), Jones enjoyed something of a field day – despite never visiting the remoter countries of his attention, relying instead on informants, collectors and returning travellers. His Lyric Airs (1804) offered “Specimens of Greek, Albanian, Walachian, Turkish, Arabian, Persian, Chinese, and Moorish National Songs and Melodies (being the first selection of the kind ever yet offered to the public:) to which are added, Basses for the Harp, or Piano-forte”. An 1807 anthology was devoted extensively to “Maltese Melodies; Or National Airs, And Dances, usually performed by the Maltese Musicians at their Carnival & other Festivals”. “Printed for the author, in the Lord Steward’s Court-Yard, near the ball room, St. James’s Palace,” Terpsichore’s Banquet comprised “Select beauties of various national melodies consisting of Spanish, Maltese, Russian, Armenian, Hindostan, English, Swedish, German, French, Swiss, and other favourite airs; most of them never before published”.

In 1806 Jones effectively introduced the ‘German Waltz’ to Britain (so charmingly Regent-ified by Sor a decade later).

The Maltese/Balkan-related repertory would make an exotically referenced recording, Camilleri Podesta ideally suited to the task.

“A thought of him who was about to sit there ...” Leaving the wooden floored Throne Room for the tile-laid Tapestry Hall, its walls hung with 18th century French Gobelins, to be greeted by a 1900 rosewood 88-key Bechstein grand, partially restored by Nikolai Vukovic around five years ago. Dusty about the tuning pins and soundboard, nonetheless an old lady of fine complexion and shapely legs, ivories intact. Not to be pushed but caringly touched. Audience standing. Out of the dark, into the spotlight. Karl Fiorini. Garbed in black. To play his Second Sonata, pre-

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miered last year (11 June) at the Malta Society of Arts https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=U55GBCvr8XI. Intense and critical … thoughtful, impassioned … coveting his freedom yet pondering anchorage – what, you wonder, goes on behind those eyes staring long into the distance? - he cuts a leaner, more haunted figure than formerly. Temperamental on the one hand, tempered on the other. Ever the complex probing cosmopolitan reading the European mind yet now, into his forties, more accepting of locality and the tongue of the streets that reared him. Only the night before, the weathered blood-lines of centuries about him, he’d been drinking and taking finger food outside the allusive Spurs supporters’ club in Frederick Street, followed by champagne and glitter at the Phoenicia, before propping up the Offbeat music bar at the bottom of Merchant Street for a spot of intimate midnight jazz with Mariele Zammit in that suggestively interactive half-smile mood of hers that’s so beguiling.

The new Sonata was commissioned

by Joanna Delia. Fancier of exquisite things, petite of frame, Apollonian in vision, Joanna epitomises the energised, liberated, free-thinking modern woman, “living life for life’s sake”. Doctor, aesthetic physician, vocal women’s rights activist, mother, influencer, entrepreneur, patron of the arts, with a brain as sharp as a Saracen dagger, and a flair for writing, description and dialogue that seduces one into the page.

“There is something exquisitely bohemian about her,” it’s been said, “from her dark, flowing tresses to her perfect, oval face, highly reminiscent of a magnificent, fiery gypsy” (Giselle Scicluna).

“Art,” she argues, “is a language, which speaks to you on so many levels. It is not a pretty thing, that’s hung on a wall for decoration, it is constantly delivering a message acting as a catalyst for discussion, exploration and discovery … when I find something which I really like, then it becomes an obsession … I feel strongly about supporting our living artists, because if they don’t create art, our generation will have nothing to leave for posterity and we will consequently become irrelevant … art is an ongoing exploration of ways to express emotion as well as the human condition and identity.” With her glass-floored house and roof terrace overlooking the Grand Harbour, an open bottle of prosecco on the table, limited edition books for the reading and giving, welcoming friends all hours, Joanna is Valletta’s rampant, fiercely independent power-hub, working late, partying late, doing not saying,

making possible what others can only dream about.

Like Karl’s tripartite 2017 Sonata (“an engrossing wordless narrative, stylistically accessible yet elusively mysterious”, Toronto’s Whole Note Magazine) https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=qKXVhpR5vmg, the Second is in the form of a single Lisztian/Bergian movement about as third again as long (around fifteen minutes), divided into four chapters. There are points of similarity between the two – recurrent motifs (the stabbing figure at the start

is germinally important), contrasting sections of agitation and stasis, virtuosity and lyricism, driving rhythms and soaring climaxes, twisted elements of dance – but overall the language of the new work seems more clarified and tonally identifiable. A drama of minors and majors and pivotal linkage. More pastoralised than firebranded. To what extent the performance, from memory, is limited by the relative frailty of the Bechstein I can only presume. The premiere, featuring a Steinway B, certainly left the impression of being dynamically stronger and more boldly characterised

in terms of attack, articulation and colour choices. No matter. Retiring when it comes to exposure or interviews, Karl rarely makes public appearances.

They’re eminently worth seeking out.

With a regime of Beethoven sonatas and Chopin studies as his practice ground, playing for himself rather than any gathering, it’s the best way to get a sense of the man, the wiry pulse of his nervosity …

Reception among the lamps, fronds and shadows, memories re-kindled, new ones made. Soldiers in fatigues manning the great doors. St. George’s Square. To Babel around the corner, drink, cigarillos and love entanglements tensioning the intellectual discourse, loosening emotional inhibitions. Long night.

Dawn. Home on the afternoon flight.

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Review /United Kingdom/ Rothschild Collection September - October 2022 UNITED KINGDOM

IMPORTANT CHINESE PORCELAIN FROM THE WORLD-RENOWNED ANTHONY DE ROTHSCHILD COLLECTION REDISCOVERED

A

selection of important Chinese porcelain that formed part of the worldrenowned Anthony de Rothschild Chinese porcelain collection has been rediscovered at his daughter Renée Louise Marie de Rothschild’s (1927-2015) home.

The pieces had been gifted to her in 1948 when Anthony de Rothschild (1887-1961) donated the family home, Ascott House to the National Trust and dispersed the contents of it to several museums and amongst his family.

While most of it had been passed on through other generations and was accounted for, this particular selection of works had been packed away and was only recently brought to the family’s attention. The pieces bear the unique labels that correlate with the meticulous inventory that Anthony de Rothschild maintained for his spectacular museum-quality collection, as he added to it over the years.

Anthony de Rothschild was one of the earliest collectors of Oriental works. He amassed his extensive collection from his travels, which were ins’gated by an initial trip to China with

Much of the porcelain on offer features inventory numbers, notes and antique dealers’ labels, such was the conscientious nature of Anthony de Rothschild’s record-keeping and the care taken with the pieces in his collection.

his brother in 1911. He would later travel extensively, keeping meticulous records of everything he bought and chose only museumquality pieces. Dreweatts is therefore thrilled to offer the opportunity to obtain such exceptional works with impeccable provenance, in a sale of Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art on November 9th and 10th 2022.

Anthony de Rothschild began collecting predominantly after serving in the First World War. A very passionate collector like his father, he amassed the majority of his works throughout the 1920’s and 30’s and was an early lender to the Oriental Ceramics Society exhibitions, which were founded in 1921.

A Chinese pale celadon and brown jade model of a monkey from the Qing Dynasty.

Estimate £2,000-£3,000

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The bulk of Anthony de Rothchild’s collection was kept at the family’s country home, Ascott House in Buckinghamshire. His role in the family business meant that he lived between his London residence and Ascott house. He and his wife Yvonne Lydia Louise de Rothschild (1899-1977) were well-known for their commitment to public service. In 1933, they were among several prominent Jewish founders of the Central British Fund for German Jewry, the British refugee relief agency providing emergency.

The Rothschilds offered Ascott house for use as a hospital during the war and when the Chelsea Pensioners were bombed out of their

A Chinese white and russet jade model of a quail dating from the Qianlong period. Estimate £3,000-£5,000

home, it became a safe haven for them for several years. It was also used by the army for a time and in 1948 the Rothschilds gifted the house to the National Trust, with whom it remains to this day. The contents of the house were divided amongst the family, with several important works being donated to leading museums, where they are on display to this day.

They stand on French mid-18th century mounts with fine details around the rim, which includes a lizard to the foot and carry an estimate of £4,000-£6,000.

A pair of stunning Chinese white glazed figures of horses from the Kangxi period depict them lying down, but with legs bent as if about to stand. Their manes, forelocks and pricked ears are brown-

The discovered pieces were verified by the labels and meticulous inventory kept by Anthony de Rothschild

glazed and they rest on shaped bases.

The pair carries an estimate of £3,000£5,000.

Amongst several Chinese jade and hardstone works is a white and russet jade model of a quail dating from the Qianlong period. Very finely detailed it features a vase and lingzhi fungus on a pierced rock base and has an estimate

Commenting on the collection, Dreweatts Chinese and Asian Art specialist Yingwen Tao said: “We are very honoured to sell this rare group of rediscovered works that graced the collection of one of the greatest pioneer collectors of Chinese ceramics of the 20th century.

I’m sure they will cause excitement and attract attention from collectors around the globe.”

of £3,000-£5,000. Another highlight from the jade collection is the white jade carving of cats, also dated back to the 18th century. In ancient China the cat was considered to be a symbol of happiness. The cats are carved recumbent and grasping a lingzhi fungus stem which denotes longevity in Chinese culture. Made of very fine quality white jade, the group carries an estimate of £2,000-£3,000.

Monkeys feature consistently in Chinese culture, often portrayed as mischievous and cheeky, however they were believed to have the ability to drive away evil spirits and were therefore believed to be able to bring good fortune. A Chinese pale celadon and brown jade model of a monkey from the Qing Dynasty depicts the monkey seated, holding its young. With its unusual large size of over 12cm high, it carries an estimate of £2,000-£3,000.

A fine pair of Chinese gilt-metal mounted candelabra are comprised of Kangxi period porcelain parrots with a turquoise and aubergine glaze.

A pair of stunning Chinese white glazed figures of horses from the Kangxi period. Estimate £3,000-£5,000

SALADS BY DAY DRINKS BY NIGHT @ NO.43 43, MERCHANT STREET, VALLETTA

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Interview /Exhibition/ Malta September - October 2022 MALTA

S A M VA S S A L L O

Start a Revolution from your bed Pleasure is power. It’s therefore no surprise that it’s been weaponized into a tool of social shame and oppression. It’s a phenomenon that is not exclusive but definitely visible in Malta’s conservative rooting. Fresh out of art school, Maltese visual artist and activist Emma Grima explores the the power of pleasure in a thought-provoking body of work called The Vulva Monologues. Artpaper’s editor Sam Vassallo caught up with the artist to speak about the project and her career.

Sam: You’ve just graduated in Photography from the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague.

Congratulations! How are you feeling about it?

Emma: I’m very eager to start my career and transition from the art student bubble into the art scene.

So far, I’ve been focused on my studies and now I’m ready to build up my network, collaborate and see how I can make my work travel and move around for more people to see. It’s a constant learning experience - but it’s super exciting.

Sam: Your work has a distinct edge. It’s deeply rooted in social issues by tackling the taboo.

How do you find the starting point for your projects?

Emma: It always begins with my roots and experience as a Maltese woman. I start a project with a question that I find hard to answer, often due to the intricacies of the island’s culture and my upbringing there. Moving to the Netherlands, which is such a free, outspoken country, has forced me to look

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Sam: It definitely turned a lot of heads for locals and even foreigners who might’ve not known about Malta’s ban.

What about the Vulva Monologues?

Emma: For the Vulva Monologues, it was about a desire to learn about the power of pleasure. I was going through a breakup, beginning a new relationship and having a moment in covid to be alone and explore my own sexuality, which led to the groundwork for my final multi-media university project.

Sam: What does the work consist of?

Emma: It’s based on connections I made with seven women, where we spoke intimately about our thoughts on pleasure, our own experiences with masturbation, our rituals and routines. It all came together in a visual podcast, photographs, film, book and performative piece. The beauty of it is that the work keeps evolving.

Sam: How was the reception of it?

Emma: I was very grateful - there were 300 other students exhibiting but people really engaged with the space. Some offered their own personal stories, the differences between generations when it comes to owning pleasure and the evolution stigmas and taboos.

I feel like it did what it needed to - to spark conversation and help ease stigmas through dialogue.

Sam: What lessons did you learn from the Vulva Monologues?

Emma: I learnt about the importance of being consciously aware of your sexual journey. I learnt how powerful pleasure is: to gain confidence in yourself and your body, to be communicative with others and yourself, about the power of consent and boundaries.

It’s grounding and liberating both personally and politically.

Sam: Agreed. So what’s next for Emma Grima?

Emma: I want to bring the work to Malta for the conversation to reach my home and, of course, to keep trying to answer these difficult questions through my art.

around, ask questions and think. I find myself drawn to the interplay between the personal and the political.

Sam: What role does the personal and political play in your work?

Emma: I’m not an artist that creates personal work, but I use the personal as a driving force. It’s the fire that keeps me going, wanting to know more, diving into research and connecting with people. That’s when the project turns and becomes about them.

In Unspoken Truths (2020) for example, I explored what it means to have autonomy over your body, particularly as women in a country with a blanket ban on abortion, a highly taboo subject. I took portraits of 44 individuals and captured women with their fists in the air and hangers in the other, which is the symbol for underground, unsafe abortion. It was a collaboration with two great NGOs, Women’s Rights Foundation and Young Progressive Beings, and was displayed on billboards outside the capital Valletta.

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Architecture /AI platform September - October 2022

ERICA GIUSTA is Director of Innovation at architecture firm AP Valletta. She read for an MA in Architecture, and has a Post-Graduate Master from the Sole24Ore Business School in Milan. She contributes regularly to academic journals and international architecture magazines such as A10 New European Architecture and Il Giornale dell’Architettura.

MALTA

ERICA GIUSTA

ARTIFICIAL ORIGINALITY: HOW AN AI PLATFORM CAN REVOLUTIONISE CREATIVE PROCESSES

Marine fortress, generated on Midjourney

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Architecture /AI platform September - October 2022 MALTA Continued

I

f you are wondering why your social media feeds have suddenly become populated with an unusual amount of evocative artistic images, it’s because sophisticated AI-generated contents are now accessible to anyone with a bit of curiosity, an electronic device and an internet connection.

Midjourney is the most straight-forward and gratifying of a recent series of AI platforms which made this possible by generating complex images from a simple text prompt, and which is therefore responsible for large part of those intriguing tweets and Instagram posts. A few well-chosen key words, simply typed into a chat box, can in fact initiate a limitless series of possible visualisations of that association of words, within minutes. After the initial inputting of the text prompts, the chatbot offers four different images, each available for upscaling, meaning further detailing, and for variations, meaning another set of four images. Each variation can undergo endless other variations and so on, ad infinitum. Iterations are unlimited and represent the core of the platform’s model: while enticing the user to keep experimenting, they contribute to training the AI and therefore lead to a continuous, rapid improvement of the general quality of outcomes – and perhaps to an increased standardization of creative disciplines.

This flow of dazzling original images is also one the most intriguing and challenging AI-training exercises ever done. Behind the sim-

A surrealist Mediterranean garden generated on Midjourney

A floating Mediterranean fortress, generated on Midjourney

“The role of the architect and designer, after all, is to show something that was not there before. Clearly, artificial intelligence works on this very part: on intuition and visualisation. This does not mean that there will be no more work for us in the future, but that it will certainly change dramatically”

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Marine fortress, generated on Midjourney

plicity of the front-end platform, there are thousands of trillions of operations per image, and a super-computing-power which has never been so accessible to almost anyone. The revolutionary aspect of Midjourney lies in its unprecedented accessibility. Even though we have been familiar with notions of deep learning, coding and algorithm design for a while, most of us were not able to directly make use of them, let alone incorporate them in the initial stages of a creative process.

The rapidity of this paradigm shift is as astonishing as its results: in less than four years, what was considered ‘AI-generated art’ has gone from sensational research project for Ivy League universities, to millions of people’s new favourite hobby. According to David Holz, founder of Midjourney, creative industries professionals represent only 30% of the platform’s users, while the remaining 70% is there for the fun of effortlessly turning any idea into a startling, beautiful image. That 30% of professional users represents architects, graphic designers and artists who seem to be both attracted and terrified by it in equal measure. On the one hand, Midjourney offers the possibility to facilitate and improve iterations, crucial to any creative process, and to therefore encourage imagination. On the other hand, it indirectly questions the notion that in any creative discipline, the idea behind a piece, or the concept of a project proposal, counts as much as its final outcomes - if not more.

A floating Mediterranean fortress, generated on Midjourney

In a recent interview on architecture magazine Domus, Niccolò Casas (architect and researcher at Bartlett University College of London, and author of Plasticity) rightly points out that “the role of the architect and designer, after all, is to show something that was not there before. Clearly, artificial intelligence works on this very part: on intuition and visualisation. This does not mean that there will be no more work for us in the future, but that it will certainly change dramatically”. How will it change, is not clear yet. What will we be able to do with Midjourney other than

creating beautiful 2D concept images?

Will the platform be able to switch to 3D content, and therefore be able to plug into more sophisticated software like Rhino? Also, how will copyright issues of what is produced by the AI be regulated?

These are just some of the several key questions which will define the nature of the drastic change which Casas describes, and which might revolutionise, and even generate, entire creative industries.

A surrealist Mediterranean garden, generated on Midjourney

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Spotlight /Ivory Coast / Africa September - October 2022 AFRICA

CHRISTINE XUEREB SEIDU

IVORIANS TO THE WORLD: Their Realities Expressed Into Dreams Of Future Through Art

E

very other year, during the Venice Biennale, those of us following the African art scene follow in anticipation as to how many African countries or which African countries will be having a pavilion given the lack of representation in general but since their first participation in 2013, I could say that Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) were quite consistent, missing out on just the 56th edition which had the main exhibition ‘All the World’s Futures’ curated by the late Nigerian Okwui Enwezor.

Until this month the newly opened Museum of Contemporary Cultures Adama Toungara (MuCAT) ran the exhibition ‘Memoria: Tales of Another History’, a multidisciplinary group exhibition with 14 international artists, 6 of whom are Ivorian, among them Joana Choumali, LaFalaise Dion and Valerie Oka. Whilst Choumali uses photography to explore issues of African identity and diversity, Dion and Oka were rather using objects symbolising African identity- LaFalaise Dion’s videos focusing on her signature imagery of the cowrie shell as a form of expressing Africa’s grandeur and sacred identity whilst Valerie Oka worked on restoring the significance of Africa’s artefacts spread across museums worldwide. This thought is very much in line with how the Baule people of Ivory Coast view sculptureserving many functions which can shift over time and within different contexts. These artists are not new to the international art scene. Lafalaise Dion is known to have designed the ‘Lagbaja’ cowrie shell mask worn by Beyonce in the ‘Spirit’ music video whilst Joana Choumali and Valerie Oka made their debuts at the Ivorian pavilion of the 57th and 58th Venice Biennale as did many other well established Ivorian artists who are mainly represented by Ivorian international art galleries Cecile Fakhoury and LouiSimone Guirandou.

Laetiky, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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Aboudia, Masquerade #3, mixed media on canvas, 140 x 120 cm, 2019. Photo: Issam Zejly

CHRISTINE XUEREB SEIDU founded Christine X Art Gallery in 2004 after a university degree in Art History and Anthropology.

She has returned to Malta after a year in Ghana where she explored African art and culture.

Armand Boua, Les môgôs de Poy #1, mixed media on canvas, 100 x 100 cm, 2019. Photo: Issam Zejly

Aboudia (Abdoulaye Diarrassouba), represented by Cecile Fakhoury, is one of the artists representing Ivory Coast at this year’s Venice Biennale. He’s perhaps the most widely known artists coming from this recently war-torn country. Inspired by the street culture of Abidjan, his multi-layered violent expressionistic figurative artwork portrays the trauma faced by Ivorians a decade ago as well referencing forms of Vodou. At the national pavilion named ‘The Dreams of a Story’’ at Magazzino del Sale 3, Dorsoduro 264, he is joined by artists Armand Boua, the late forefather of contemporary African art Frederic Bruly Bouabre, Yeanzi (Saint-Etienne Yeanzi), Laetita Ky and Aron Demetz. Collectively they interpret and represent the socio-economic realities and dreams of the future in Ivory Coast. Armand Boua’s paint and tar paintings and the space created by their removal through scratching is his response to the inhumane treatment of many whilst Laetitia Ky denounced the modern definitions of the contemporary human condition through her hair sculptures. Yeanzi’s lightboxes depicting icons and symbols are here being transformed from past experiences into powerful expressions for the future. Aron Demetz’s work bring us a more surrealistic dream form through sculptures with fictional and mysterious characters.

Many were the Ivorian artists who have had their fair share of exposure in the international contemporary art world. These include Ananias Leki Dago, Franck Fanny, Paul Sika, Jems Robert Koko Bi and Kagnedjatou Joachim Silue as well as painters Ernest Duku, Ouattara Watts, Tamsir Dia. Unless you’re heading to Venice anytime until 10th September this year where you could stop by the Ivorian pavilion at Magazzino del Sale 3, Dorsoduro 264, it’ll probably be worth visiting the Ivory Coast’s gallery Cecile Fakhoury with its current exhibition ‘About Now #2- Abidjan: Emerging Artists From Africa and Beyond’ also ending on 10th September. This will be followed by two solo shows- the first is that of artist Thibaut Bouedjoro-Camus with his first solo in Abidjan ‘Bonne Nouvelle’ from the 22nd September to the 27th November and the second is the second solo show of Beninese Romeo Mivekannin in Abidjan from the 23rd September to the 26th November 2022. LouiSimone Guirandou is one of the galleries in the line up of galleries exhibiting at the 10th edition of the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London mid-October. We can’t wait to see which Ivorian artists they, as well as the other African art galleries present, will have exhibiting.

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GABRIELE SPILLER is a journalist with an MA in Art Education. She lives in Berlin and Ghajnsielem. Her book 50 Reasons to Love Gozo is an expression of her enthusiasm for Malta’s culture.

Review /Germany / Gallery September - October 2022

Max Liebermann, Stevenstift in Leiden (1. Fassung), 1889/1890, Öl auf Leinwand © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Erworben durch die Freunde der Nationalgalerie / Jörg P. Anders

GERMANY

GABRIELE SPILLER

The millionaire who painted poor people “My Liebermann. A Homage.” is a presentation on the 175th birthday of the painter who stands for German history like no other.

W

hy are Max Liebermann’s paintings still so popular?

If you look at his 87-year life (1847 – 1935), you are impressed by the social currents and political changes he had to go through.

He was born in Berlin as one of six children into a Jewish industrialist family.

But young Max was not interested in prestigious studies like medicine or law.

He had to fight hard against his parents to get into the Art School. Soon the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71

brought a break and Liebermann served as a medic. The painting “Gänserupferinnen” (Goose Pluckers) dates from the following year. With a bang, the young artist established his reputation as a painter of ugliness.

We see eight women completely absorbed in their work of plucking the feathers out of slaughtered geese. The sheer size of 118 x 172 metres makes it a statement. But what was revolutionary and scandalised by the press was the depiction of simple peasant women in a format that until then had been reserved for sublime religious depictions

and glorified history painting. In this painting Liebermann deliberately places light accents on the geese and the women’s bonnets and blouses. One can recognize the influence of Rembrandt.

The experienced collector and railway magnate Strousberg acquires the “ugly” painting. Liebermann’s father in particular would never have expected this.

The son’s further art studies now have his blessing.

The next pictures presented by the Alte Nationalgalerie are also realistic and unsentimental. One sees Amsterdam or-

phan girls and the infant school. In contrast to the cloying portraits of young girls by his contemporary Renoir, Liebermann shows a simple reality. In his work the women are individuals – not as “Impressionist pin-ups”, but drawn by their hard and monotonous work, dressed in coarse fabrics.

By 1890, Liebermann’s stays in the Netherlands, Italy and Munich were behind him. He had started a family and became president of the Berlin Secession. This artists’ association went into confrontation with the Academy School of Painting under Wilhelm II, the Kai-

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Review /Germany / Gallery September - October 2022 GERMANY Continued

ser, who considered Liebermann an anarchist and a “gutter artist”.

In the summers, the family retreated to their villa on Lake Wannsee. “The Garden Bench” and other paintings reflect the harmonious atmosphere even during the First World War, the Revolution and the troubled Weimar Republic. Today, the grounds can be visited again and the Liebermann Villa houses exhibitions.

Liebermann’s self-portrait was painted in the “Golden Twenties”, a time of contradictions. The artist belonged to a privileged rich class while the majority suffered hardship. He followed the rise of the National Socialist movement closely and was aware that the political promises were pied piper slogans that ultimately brought Hitler to power. This is where Liebermann’s famous phrase comes in: “I can’t eat as much as I want to vomit.”

Liebermann died in Berlin in 1935. One is tempted to think that he fortunately did not have to live through the worst. His wife Martha took her own life in spring 1943 to avoid deportation to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. On the spot where the Palais Liebermann stood right next to the Brandenburg Gate there is a memorial stone for her.

The show in the Alte Nationalgalerie reveals how the painter not only advanced artistically, but also anticipated the changing role of women, situations of economic upheaval and political radicalism.

Max Liebermann, Haus am Wannsee, 1926, Öl auf Holz © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Jörg P. Anders

“My Liebermann. Eine Hommage.”, Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin. Until 11.11.2022. 13 videos with picture reviews are on the Youtube channel of the Alte Nationalgalerie: www.smb.museum/ang

Max Liebermann, Flachsscheuer in Laren, 1887, Öl auf Leinwand © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Andres Kilger

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THE HOME OF EXQUISITE CHOCOLATE.

Spotlight / Events / Global September - October 2022 EXHIBITIONS

09.22-10.22

A selection of art events from around the world

Events until January 2023

Until 5 September 2022

Until 18 September 2022

GUO PEI: COUTURE FANTASY

UN PARADIS RETROUVÉ

Couture Fantasy invites visitors on a journey into Guo Pei’s creative universe with designs displayed throughout the permanent collection and special exhibition galleries at the Legion of Honor, transforming the museum into a palace of couture.

Legion of Honour, San Fransisco

As part of the Nice Art Biennale, the Musée Matisse presents an unprecedented conversation between David Hockney and Henri Matisse. The exhibition HockneyMatisse. Un paradis retrouvé starts with a recent series of flower iPad paintings made by the artist which have not yet been exhibited. The show, curated by Claudine Grammont, then takes the public on a journey through the museum’s permanent collection seen through the lens of David Hockney’s art.

Musée Matisse Photo: Sccession H. Matisse © David Hockney Musée Matisse Nicephoto François Fernandez

Until 2 October 2022

Until 8th January 2023

“OUR SELVES – PHOTOGRAPHS BY WOMEN ARTISTS FROM HELEN KORNBLUM” IN NEW YORK

DONATELLO: THE RENAISSANCE

How have women artists used photography as a tool of resistance? The exhibition “Our Selves: Photographs by Women Artists from Helen Kornblum” will seek to answer this question. The expectation is to reframe restrictive notions of womanhood, exploring the connections between photography, feminism, civil rights, Indigenous sovereignty, and queer liberation.

MoMa, New York Photo: Sharon Lockhart, Untitled, 2010 © MoMa

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In his own time, the 15th-century Florentine sculptor Donatello was regarded as “the master of masters”. Despite this, there has been no major exhibition devoted to the sculptor’s work for nearly 40 years. This changed in March when a sweeping survey of Donatello’s work opens in Florence at Palazzo Strozzi and at the nearby Museo Nazionale del Bargello, which houses the most important collection of works by the sculptor, including David (around 1440). Smaller incarnations of the show will be seen at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin in September and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London next year.

Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

S

/ Events/ /Budapest Malta Spotlight /Africa September - October June - October 2021 2022

VISUAL ART EXHIBITIONS

09.22-10.22

A selection of curated events in Malta

Events until November 2022

18.08.22

09.09.22

THE GOLD OF MALTA: MARTINE RIGAUD-BUSUTTIL

THE RICHARD ELLIS ARCHIVE – DEPICTING MALTA FOR 150 YEARS

Until 7 September 2022

The Gold of Malta (L’Or De Malte / Id-Deheb ta’ Malta) is an exhibition of sketches and paintings created when the artist Martine Rigaud-Busuttil spent one year with the Maltese lace-makers of the Malta Society of Arts at the time of COVID-19.

Malta Society of Arts, Palazzo de La Salle, 219 Republic Street, Valletta Photo: Gabriel Zammit

Until 23 October 2022

The Richard Ellis Archive consists of 39,000+ glass negatives documenting the period in Malta and Gozo between 1861 and 1938. They have been digitised in archival-grade quality for the first time in their history, and this is the first time they are being printed, the print being the ultimate repository of the photographic process. 30 prints of huge detailed dimensions will be exhibited, allowing the public to experience the depiction of Malta and Gozo as they were 150 years ago for the first time in the archive history, from reaching Malta through the naval aspects of the Grand Harbour to entering the urban fabric of Valletta and Sliema as opposed to the extremely rural fabric of the rest of the country.

Space C, Spazju Kreattiv, Pjazza Kastilja Pope Pius V Street Il-Belt Valletta

29.10.22

30.10.22

SHADOWS AND LIGHTTHE WILFRID FLORES ARCHIVE

GROUNDWATERS: OUTSIDER PERSPECTIVES AND VISIONS OF ELSEWHERE

Until 22 November 2022

Wilfrid Flores (1912-1981) ’s photographic work needs to be seen within the context of its time from around the late 1920’s until his death in 1981. A master of his craft and an inventive and technically skilled darkroom printer his contribution to photography in Malta cannot be overstated.His intention was not to document Malta (as many others were doing) but to go beyond the document towards a more contemplative reading of his photographs. By doing so he left us a testament of a time in Maltese history. His quasi-romantic relation to nature speaks to us of a calm and serenity that in today’s world is all but lost.

His empathy for the people he photographed, and for the human condition as a whole, raises uncomfortable questions about our own society that has veered towards an obsessive exaltation of the self. Curated by David Pisani.

Christine X Art Gallery, Sliema, 17, Tigne Street, Sliema

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Until 19 November 2022

The search for raw art, untouched by the corrupting effects of culture, led the artist and art-historian Jean Debuffet to collect, under the heading Art Brut, work made by artists who were outside the established art world. GROUNDWATERS will bring together a collection of artworks and objects made by a similar group of outsider individuals living and working in Malta. GROUNDWATERS will investigate the work’s unique aesthetic logic as well as stories of pain, hope, survival and strength. The exhibition will also include ex-voto paintings, African Fetish dolls and other objects which have their roots in religion, magic and ritual.

Valletta Contemporary 15, 16, 17 East Street Valletta, VLT 1253

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For anyone passionate about their art or craft, a long stretch of time away from that art form feels like an eternity, fingers starting to itch to create. That absence proves how important their art is to them, and that the urge to create is utterly pure and strong, and very much a necessity. This was very much the case for Debbie Caruana Dingli and the creation of the present collection of watercolours.

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Us Maltese

For anyone passionate about their art or craft, a long stretch of time away from that art form feels like an eternity, fingers starting to itch to create.

That absence proves how important their art is to them, and that the urge to create is utterly pure and strong, and very much a necessity. This was very much the case for Debbie Caruana Dingli and the creation of the present collection of watercolours.