First-Of-Its-Kind Exhibition Mixing Writing And Art Coming To Valletta
From social media to life mantras, we’re constantly bombarded with aphorisms. Brief, disconnected and at times philosophical sentences, aphorisms have been used time and time again as motivational quotes and inspirational tag lines to Instagram uploads – What you fear overtakes you, There’s no time like the present, and so on.
What we’ve never seen, however, is what happens when multiple artists work with different writers on interpreting – and reinterpreting – these aphoristic texts. The result is as dynamic as it is fascinating, and it’ll be happening, for the first time ever, in Malta.
That’s where (met)afourisms comes in
Put quite simply, four different artists were given a series of aphoristic texts. These artists had to in turn translate them into an artwork, while each being assigned four different collaborators. The entire group of eight creatives were faced with an intriguing set of questions:
“What happens when an artist engages with an aphoristic text? What if the artist were paired up with a collaborating writer who has the task of documenting the artist’s work which responds to the same aphoristic text?”
Attempting to present an answer to these questions will be artists Cyprus’ Klitsa Antoniou, England’s Stuart Franklin, and Malta’s own Vince Briffa and Trevor Borg. These will in turn be collaborating with Italy’s Irene Biolchini and Sara Dolfi Agostini, along with the Maltese Clive Zammit and Niki Young. This last group will be following the artists through their creative process, sharing ideas with them and documenting the entire process.
“Basically, this process was entirely experimental,” Niki Young told Lovin Malta. “We did not know in advance what would come out of the collaboration. The artists were selected according to their specific media and international experience.”
In fact, met(afourisms) is not just about writing and painting. The exhibition also includes sculpture, photography, installation, video and sound.
Vince Briffa, PANED WINDOW (Min hu barra, barra u min hu ġewwa, ġewwa), Interactive sound sculpture, White Matter exhibition, Spazju Kreattiv, Valletta, 2017
Here’s what one can expect from Maltese artist Trevor Borg for this particular exhibition
(met)afourisms kicks off on the 4th of May at Valletta’s Spazju Kreattiv. It is being supported by Arts Council Malta – Malta Arts Fund Project Support Grant, and will be open for visiting right up to 27th May. More information on the project, the collaborators, and the actual exhibition can be found on the official Facebook event page.
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