Turning Heartbreak Into Art, Maltese Visual Artist With Synesthesia Tackles Local Issues With The Power Of Illustration
Social issues plague our country on a daily basis. Being the small island that we are, it doesn’t take much for certain issues to take the whole country by storm. These hot topics are sometimes spoken of for weeks on end, but one local artist is adding his own personal flair to the discussion with a little bit of art.
Maltese visual artist and illustrator Ramon Azzopardi Fiott has found a way to tackle everything from sexual identity to religion into beautiful pieces of art, and we can’t get enough of it.
Ramon has been drawing ever since he remembers. “At home, at school, no matter where I was I’d have a sketchbook or some loose papers to doodle on,” he told Lovin Malta. He remembers that when he was at school he would try to compromise with his teachers since they thought that him drawing meant that he was not paying attention.
“Getting ideas and anxieties out of mind and onto paper has always been something I needed” he said. “It’s a crucial tap for me, otherwise all of my thoughts and feelings would stay inside of me, causing me to get anxious,” Ramon said.
“I enjoy playing the guitar, gardening, and upcycling, but visual art is a crucial tap for me. I use it to take advantage of my synesthesia – which can be a noisy way to see the world.” he said. Synestesia is a cognitive condition where one sense seems to be perceived by another sense at the same time. For example, you might hear sounds, or taste what they see.
“After my mother passed away, I stopped drawing for a time,” Ramon told Lovin Malta. “I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was let go from my first job and I ended a six year relationship. I moved out of my childhood home,” he said.
“After a day looking for papers that belonged to my mother, signing new ones, and dealing with an old townhouse that needed lots of help, I had an anxiety attack,” Ramon said.
“I decided to try my hand at drawing again. That’s when I created the first piece I’d use for my exhibition, Epokaliss.” Ramon said.
Epokaliss focused on loss. It was a documentation of the first year after her loss, the nature of endings, the influence of loss and self-exploration. Ramon explained that he wouldn’t have managed to put up Epokaliss without his business partner Lee D’Amato and Giovanna Hammet, who let him showcase his works at a local Palazzo.
“I always identified myself as a strong atheist,” Ramon said. “So while I appreciated sentiments such as ‘she is in a better place’, I couldn’t really find solace in them. That made me really look at the way other creatives and individuals who do not subscribe to religious doctrines navigate loss in their lives.”
Ramon’s most recent work has been inspired by local issues which have been on everyone’s lips for days on end; there’s the recent kitten murder in Mellieħa, people being taken advantage of by landlords, the brutal killing of the storks, and the island’s refugee crisis.
“When I am designing artwork, I often team up or talk with other writers, artists and, academics. Many posts on my Facebook page feature work I’ve produced with them, sometimes it takes the form of illustrations, other times it’s a project we’re working on,” Ramon said.
“We like to show local issues under a different light, and help promote organisations and people who deserve attention for the work they’re doing. Right now, we’re collaborating together on writing and designing short narratives, but that’s still a work in progress.”
Ramon is now practicing his own freelance illustration and design business, and works with local NGO Greenhouse.
Currently, they’re collaborating on an immersive theatre performance which will be using shadow puppetry, body art, and actors to raise awareness on the importance of Maltese orchids and bee conservation to Malta’s biodiversity.
The piece will be showcased at City Lights theatre during the Science in the City festival on the 28th of this month. Ramon also started working on a line of merchandise with Greenhouse, where they hope to get more artists on board to help them grow as an NGO.
What do you think of Ramon’s story? Leave us a comment below
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