Setting Malta, Maleth, at the centre of its theme, the project focuses on the role of the island as cultural centre of the Mediterranean Sea, both in history and in current times. The project seeks to present an exhibit which invites the audience to reflect on their own lifetime journey of self-discovery, their own search for a personal Haven/ Port. Drawing on the tri-fold of history/archaeology, myth/tradition and vision/expectation, the exhibit aims to create within the space of the Malta Pavilion a topos/locus of artistic conversation for the whole of the Mediterranean Sea.
Absolutely entuned with this year’s theme of the Venice Art Biennale as described by its artistic director, the project ‘will aim to welcome its public to an expansive experience of the deep involvement… engaging visitors in a series of encounters…’, leading to self-discovery. Creating a space within a space, Evoking Heterotopias invites the audience to participate in an intuitive dialogue with the artworks which are organically placed within the built shell of the Venetian Arsenal. As vessels/ islands within a sea, artworks come together, in creating a unique experience for the visitor, who is asked to traverse the exhibition space in a voyage of self-discovery that takes place in a suggestive fictitious space of controlled light and sound.
The winning team is composed of Dr Hesperia Iliadou Suppiej (lead curator), Vince Briffa (artist), Klitsa Antoniou (artist), Trevor Borg (artist) and Matthew Joseph Casha (architect/designer). The production management team is composed of Mr Stephen Ciantar and Mr George Lazoglou.
The aim of the Malta Pavilion is to offer a platform through which Maltese contemporary artistic practices understood within the broadest sense of the term can be exposed, contextualised and presented to an international audience.
The 58th International Art Exhibition will be titled May You Live in Interesting Times, a phrase of English invention that has long been mistakenly cited as an ancient Chinese curse that invokes periods of uncertainty, crisis and turmoil.
La Biennale di Venezia 2019 artistic director Ralph Rugoff explained his choice for the theme:
“an exhibition should open people’s eyes to previously unconsidered ways of being in the world and thus change their view of that world…” where “the meaning of artworks is not embedded principally in objects but in conversations – first between artist and artwork, and then between artwork and audience…”
