Most of us move through life with a quiet certainty that being alive is self-evident. We grow, think, love, worry, plan. We distinguish instinctively between what lives and what does not. A person is alive; a stone is not. A dog is alive; a machine is not. The line feels obvious, until someone asks us to explain it.
At the entrance to For Want of (not) Measuring, a contemporary art exhibition, visitors gape at a skull. It is of a bird, but its scale suggests something other. The sculpture rises 2.8 metres above the floor of Spazju Kreattiv in Valletta and balances improbably on its beak atop a column. From some angles, it resembles a fossil; from others, a warning. The work is by Maltese artist Prof. Trevor Borg, titled In the Balance.
Dear Woman gathers letters, objects, and voices into an intimate, intergenerational archive that traces the transition from girlhood to womanhood through care and collective listening.
Words are one of, if not the most, versatile tools one may employ. They may serve to sway opinions in favour of one’s own, express original knowledge to which one may be credited, and even prolong the memory of an individual long after life’s end. In a sense, words are worlds. However, there is one condition. For words to have power, people need to understand the language. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case.
