Breathing moves air in and out of the lungs. Oxygen goes in, carbon dioxide is flushed out. An exchange occurs within our internal environment. Onfoħ is an installation that explores the phenomenon of carbon emissions through human respiration.
Carbon emissions are loosely defined as the release of greenhouse gases and their precursors into the atmosphere over a specified area and time. This notion is usually linked to the burning of fossil fuels like natural gas, crude oil, and coal. In short—human activity.
From the very beginning, humans have altered their environment. In fact, an average person takes 12 to 20 breaths per minute, amounting to an average of 23,040 breaths per day. The world’s population collectively breathes out around 2500 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, around 7% of the annual carbon dioxide tonnage produced by burning fossil fuels.
Although the carbon dioxide produced through breathing is part of a closed loop in which our output is matched by the input from the food we eat, it can be used as a metaphor to visualise other unseen outputs from other man-made sources: transportation, electricity, heating, water consumption, food production.
Onfoħ was designed to engage citizens and address an overwhelmingly challenging environmental problem of our time—our inability to visualise our own carbon footprint. The work does this by showing that which is usually unseen—the physical manifestation of carbon emissions.
The installation consisted of five plinth-like structures, each housing a glass container of lime water. Stencilled onto the pillars were illustrations of lungs, each consecutive pair having decreased surface areas, conveying a sense of degeneration. When the audience interacted with the installation, breathing into the lime water and adding carbon dioxide, they triggered a chemical reaction that produced insoluble calcium carbonate. The clear solution turned milky, making the invisible visible.
Humans contribute constantly to carbon-based, hazardous waste production, and the installation demanded that they face that reality.
Note: The installation was displayed as part of a collective exhibition entitled Human Matter, hosted by the Malta Society of Arts at the end of last year. David Falzon, Matthew Schembri and Annalise Schembri teamed up to work on this artwork as soon as they finished reading for an MFA in Digital Arts (Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences, University of Malta).
Cesar A. Cruz famously said that ‘art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.’ People have placed plenty of emphasis on the second half of that sentence—art is often used to provoke and make the viewer rethink their perception of the world. But what about the first half of that famous maxim? Can art serve as a comfort to those enduring difficult times? Pamela Baldacchino, the artist who founded the Deep Shelter project, certainly believes so.
Baldacchino has experience with serious illness. Not only is she a qualified nurse, but she also suffered from fibromyalgia for 14 years, a chronic condition characterised by constant pain, fatigue, and trouble sleeping.
While reading for her Master’s degree in Fine Arts, Baldacchino created an audiovisual work purposely designed for a hospital environment. The work expressed empathy with patients by erasing the distinction between the sufferer and the audience, visually and symbolically showing states that merge into one another; the flesh of the artist’s hand becomes one with the ‘flesh of the sea’, for example. In another piece, the boundaries between sky, earth, and tree blur. She wanted to explore the concept further, to take her ideas beyond her degree and see them implemented in a practical manner within a clinical environment. With this goal in mind, she successfully acquired funding from the TAKEOFF Business Incubation Centre (University of Malta) as well as Arts Council Malta. Deep Shelter also forms part of the Valletta 2018 Cultural Programme and was presented during the Living Cities, Liveable Spaces conference held in November.
Others embraced Baldacchino’s approach to use art in helping those suffering from illness. A mutual friend introduced her to Dr Benna Chase, a psychologist within the Oncology Department (Mater Dei Hospital), who started using Baldacchino’s work during therapy with her patients. They then met clinical aromatherapist Marika Fleri, and the trio was complete. ‘We realised how much in sync we were. Through completely different mediums, we came together with instant understanding,’ Chase says.
As the Deep Shelter project, they have organised two series of sensory workshops, consisting of six sessions each, as well as artist workshops for the creation and donation of artworks to clinical hospital spaces. Some of these workshops were aimed at people in palliative care, many of whom are aware that they are nearing the end of their lives. The workshops aimed to help them recognise, create, and make use of the ‘language’ that art provides when words are not enough.
“It is difficult for patients whose lives are punctuated by clinical sights, sounds, and smells to feel in tune with nature.”
‘In one of the workshops, author Leanne Ellul started reading from Tereża, a book she translated abouta girl during the Second World War. Several of the patients had lived that experience and it took them back to their own childhoods. Then, we asked composer and percussionist musician Luke Baldacchino to pick up on the feelings conveyed in the writing, compose a piece of music, and play. We realised that something was happening within them,’ Baldacchino says. The most marvelous transformation was in an elderly woman who usually sat perfectly still and was almost totally unresponsive to the outside world. ‘While we were using spoken language, we couldn’t manage to get through, but then a piece of music brought a rare smile to her face. Through this alternate sensory experience, we were allowing processing to happen; it’s a form of therapy as well.’
Nature has always been central to the context of the Deep Shelter project; it becomes ‘a metaphor of the self, where both fluidity and tension are captured.’ But it is
difficult for patients whose lives are punctuated by clinical sights, sounds, and smells to feel in tune with nature. With the help of her aromatherapy oils, Fleri brings in an element of nature and tactility to the patients. ‘The kind of experiences we are trying to create are aimed at making the patient feel contained and held,’ Baldacchino explains. ‘We want to provide something that supports their gritty journey towards acceptance. Even if it does not fit into what we traditionally think of as contemporary art, it fulfils the scope.’ She expresses her frustration with the art in spaces where people are undergoing medical treatment that is merely ‘decorative’ or ‘clever’, and does not provide any sustenance to the patient’s emotional well being. There has to be a story woven behind the artwork that leads one to feel understood when they are going through a time of change, upheaval, or trauma.’
Baldacchino, Chase, and Fleri have received both support and contempt about the project’s goal to derive value from art for the process of healing. However, the patients that the Deep Shelter project has treated are unequivocal about its benefits.
One patient says she believes the workshops serve to ‘release’ emotions, while supporting them throughout their different journeys. When she felt that she had nothing to lose, the artistic outlet Deep Shelter provided gave her a way to release the emotions of anger, fear, and regret she had been holding within for so long. ‘The health system needs to be more open to other therapies to be able to provide a truly holistic healing modality, incorporating mind and body and not seeing the person as ‘parts’.’
Humans are the only species on the planet with the ability to tell stories about their life through art and sensual expression. But during the cancer journey, it is harder to find yourself and your experiences reflected in a meaningful way. The Deep Shelter project seizes art’s potential as a means to process illness, pain, and trauma and puts that power into the hands of the people who need it most.
La Biennale di Venezia is the world’s biggest art event. Every two years, Venice erupts in a glorious art extravaganza as artists from all over the world descend on the city in celebration. This year marks the 57th edition of the International Art Exhibition. It also marks Malta’s return to the event. Emma Pettit tells us more.
Prostitution no.2 by Abigail Attard Prostitution is known as the oldest profession. It is also the one with the highest human cost. This artwork reflects the pain female prostitutes feel contrasted by the coldness of the men who fuel the business. Attard was inspired by news items on these issues, and her belief that more measures are needed to bring an end to the business that fuels the objectification of women.
CuriouSedative by Sharon McLean Many idioms reflect how curiosity is not always a good thing. This artwork personifies the mental struggle suffered when a curious mind tries to seek tranquility. It also represents a person’s cautiousness sheltering the self from exposing their state of mind.
Untitled 1 by Lara Gove This artwork is part of a series interpreting a text known as Cities and the Dead 4 which is found in Italo Calvino’s book Invisible Cities. The painting reflects a state of decay, an entire city turned into a burial ground with confined spaces with restricted movement.
Wooden Sculpture no.1 by John Paul Muscat This artwork’s imagery reflects multiculturalism. It is the artist’s first wood carving.
Hollow by Cristina Formosa Cyberbullying can have dreadful repercussions. This art installation with figures made of transparent tape reflects the emptiness a person can feel when they are the victims of online harassment. The figures merged with their surroundings and became part of the space, with an almost ghost-like effect.
L-għ is a thoughtful, innovative, and interactive exhibition. The reaction it provokes is from the very base of the senses and is the first final year project exhibition from BFA in Digital Arts degree students organised by the Department of Digital Arts, Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences.
The exhibitors chose an intriguing moniker: the most enigmatic and iconic rune in the Maltese alphabet (L-għ). Together they used it as a starting point and explored the thematic elements it connotes. The students tapped into six themes and developed twelve projects.
Despite majoring in animation or graphic design, each artist worked with a subject they discovered and developed over several months. Creativity and variety are abundant, with projects ranging from audio-visual experiments and curatorial work to interactive documentaries and highly thematic visual material. The body of research and thought behind each project sheds recognition on conceptual and creative transformations currently occurring in the practice of art and design. They shift the boundaries of art, design, and media and how they can be used together.
L-għ, the Degree Exhibition of the BFA in Digital Arts (Department of Digital Arts, Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences, University of Malta). Artists: Ramon Azzopardi, Matthew Calleja, Caroline Curmi, Darryl Farrugia, Danika Muscat, Angele Pollacco, Lucrezia Rapa, Pascale Spiteri, Michelle Trapani, Siobhan Vassallo, Matthew Vella and Ryan Zammit Pawley.
Digital technology opens up new possibilities for the visual arts. It allows artists to go beyond the traditional constraints of art. Sculpture is a centuries-old tradition reliant on the relationship between the artefact, and its material and space around it. In the past, sculpture was confined to being a physical act; it produced three-dimensional tangible objects that had little to do with the digital world.
Matthew Galea
But this is just one side, if you would forgive the pun, to sculpture. Sculpture can be viewed as a mental process. It is the act of remediating things, or rather reassigning meaning to objects. Marcel Duchamp’s infamous sculpture ‘Fountain’ (1917) is perhaps a perfect example of this. Meaning is a social and cultural construct created through interactions by people with the objects and their environment. Since meaning is fabricated by society, then it stands to reason how the same objects have held multiple interpretations through time.
Matthew Galea (supervised by Dr Vince Briffa) explored these social and cultural constructs to create novel artworks. To do so, he employed skills from different disciplines including drawing, painting, sculpture, music, and the other performing arts. But instead of expressing them individually he fused them into one art form. The various art forms could be experienced collectively, for example, as a musical instrument, or a painting, or even through movement.
The multidisciplinary approach also allowed Galea to investigate chemistry and physics as ways of generating content and engaging with the artefact. Galea produced an art installation that made use of the night sky, which itself has held multiple interpretations by humankind throughout time. The artwork transformed movement into audio and visual content.
Thanks to his research, Galea helped show how hyperdisciplinary artefacts that fuse various art forms are possible through digital technology. Computers can transform data into an image, audio, or text. Software can transform anything. Digital technology can enhance artworks’ interactivity with the audience, making visitors part of the artwork.
French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) is the progenitor of modern sculpture. He rebelled against idealised forms in order to express the inner truths of humanity in his artworks. His successors went on to challenge his work, continuing to explore the aesthetic revolution he had started. Key examples include Henry Moore (1898–1986), Alberto Giacometti and the largely undiscovered Swiss sculptor Hans Josephsohn (1920–2012).
Josef Kalleya, L’Abbandono della Casa Materna. Photograph of lost work (image courtesy of the Kalleya Family Archives)
These artists were studied alongside Maltese sculptor Josef Kalleya (1898–1998) at the conference entitled ‘Peripheral Alternatives to Rodin in Modern European Sculpture’ (December, 2015). The international speakers created significant links between works by renowned sculptors and Kalleya, who has been poorly understood by his contemporaries and is unknown outside Malta. Kalleya developed unique methods of creating photomontages alongside the innovative use of a knife to create powerful visceral incisions as a means of moulding his sculptures. He managed to create a new aesthetic.
The conference brought scholars from all over Europe to discuss these and other European sculptors. The scholars debated topics from the mutation of the human form to an artist’s sense of heritage. The event focused on pioneering sculptors who went beyond their current socio-political context. It also helped place Malta’s own Kalleya deservedly on the international map.
Malta is rich in culture—that is a fact beyond contention – and whose vast range of cultural activities attract different people with varied interests. But how does this fit in the context of Valletta being the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) in 2018?
Before delving into the many questions that surround this, one needs to perhaps address what we understand by the term ‘culture’ – are we talking about traditions or art? Cultural participation in Malta is often believed to be low, and a Eurobarometer survey carried out in 2013 confirmed that the Maltese are among the least active participants in culture in Europe. However, culture is not something that can be given a clear-cut definition. The term can refer to anything from art exhibitions to the more popular, traditional festi (feasts). Such feasts are not taken into consideration by many surveys like the Eurobarometer.
The Valletta 2018 Foundation’s research department has therefore embarked on a five-year research process (2015–2019) whereby it aims to understand the factors that affect cultural participation to create a body of research that will shed light on participation in the sector. The research will help artists, cultural practitioners, and policy makers.
Last year, the Valletta 2018 Foundation conducted the first in a series of surveys that are looking into cultural participation in Valletta. The survey, carried out in collaboration with the National Statistics Office, asked 1,138 respondents about their preferred cultural activity. The top three cultural activities the Maltese public enjoyed were citywide activities such as Notte Bianca, followed by Carnival, and visits to museums and historical sites.
The events took place in Valletta and registered more active participation from residents than from those living outside the city’s walls. Valletta residents are more likely to have attended artistic exhibitions and events when compared to non-Valletta residents (18% vs 12%). People from the island’s Northern Harbour region (the area around Marsamxett Harbour and neighbouring areas) placed second after Valletta residents in their likelihood to have attended some form of cultural event in the capital. On average, 35% of residents from the Northern Harbour region have attended some form of cultural activity in Valletta, compared to an average of 15% from other regions. These statistics give the impression that physical proximity plays an important role in the degree of cultural participation. People commented on the pleasant atmosphere and the sense of unity events created while others said that such events make for a different kind of family outing.
The Maltese people also seem to enjoy the performing arts. Other popular activities include going to the cinema or attending film screenings, artistic exhibitions and events, live music and live theatre events. These are followed by the Valletta parish feasts—more traditional activities tied to the city itself. Dance is not as appreciated as other performing arts disciplines, with a staggering 94% of respondents claiming they had never attended a dance performance. The only other activities less well-attended are passion plays in Easter time (95% never attended) and the Regatta (96% never attended).
The general consensus of the respondents was that Valletta is a cultural city which is improving in terms of its cultural offerings as well as its image. However, attendance for Valletta’s cultural events is still relatively low with people showing a lack of interest in cultural activities (38% of respondents claimed that they do not attend cultural events as they are simply “not interested”). This statistic is a concern in the light of the fact that Valletta will be capital of culture in just two years. It is the role of the Foundation to use these findings to find new opportunities that can boost cultural participation and encourage engagement with cultural activities. This data can also help other entities and practitioners in the sector.
The Foundation has developed a varied cultural programme, which is open, engaging, and accessible. To complement the aforementioned Valletta Participation Survey, the Foundation has also carried out an in-depth, qualitative analysis of its cultural programme. This research shows that the Valletta 2018 Cultural Programme not only includes projects related to the visual arts and feasts in Valletta, but also other community projects, aiming to eliminate barriers that prevent cultural participation and that allow for the co-creation of cultural activities and audience development. The study shows how the Foundation is taking a contemporary approach in developing cultural projects, by looking at a long-term development process and aiming for a long-lasting legacy. This research shows how that, to date, the Valletta 2018 Cultural Programme has focused on community and interdisciplinary projects, as well as projects involving music and film.
Both the Valletta Participation Survey and the qualitative analysis of the Valletta 2018 Cultural Programme will continue to be carried out in the coming years. Such studies explore the relationship between the cultural programme and participation countrywide in order for changes in the level of cultural participation in the Maltese Islands can be compared.
The Valletta 2018 Evaluation and Monitoring research process is a five-year project (2015–2019) that is looking into the impacts of Valletta 2018 on the country. The Valletta Participation Survey is a study carried out in collaboration with the NSO that takes place on a biannual basis. The qualitative study, titled ‘A Comprehensive Analysis of the Valletta 2018 Cultural Programme’ is being carried out by Daniela Blagojevic Vella.
