Videoart - The Maltese Dimension

In contrast to other forms of visual expression proliferating the Maltese islands, the
moving image practiced outside the cinematic context and particularly video art know a
fairly recent history which only dates back to the mid-1990s; to a small number of artists
who had initially decided to embrace the video medium within their existing practice and
not as their sole channel of expression and articulation.

Contrary to Europe and the United States, where since the early 1960s video has not
only helped shape a diverse range of artistic and performative expression, but was also
considered an instrumental tool for the proliferation of political and social activism, the
Maltese video art scene came to existence much later mainly due to the strong artistic
presence of the more traditional arts, which translated into an initial resistance towards
video art practice by the indigenous art scene and also the scarcity of professional video
production equipment in use by the broadcast industry but not made readily accessible
to the artist. Ironically, video works by such artists as Norbert Francis Attard, Ruth
Bianco, Vince Briffa, Austin Camilleri, Mark Mangion and Pierre Portelli who instigated a
sensibility toward the moving image as artistic practice were many times given their first
showing in exhibitions abroad and later ‘re-imported’ back to Malta’s shores. The advent
of the digital and the explosion of desktop video have helped the medium gain
widespread accessibility and through the sustained practices of the said artists amongst
others, it has steadily gained the recognition it deserves within the Maltese art scene.

It is therefore somehow ironic to have a work such as Norbert Francis Attard’s
‘Metawarphosis’ included in this selection of Maltese video work. This short, single
screen animation makes sardonic use of the same belatedly adopted artistic medium in
order to relate the struggle of the Maltese people to gain independence from political
occupation. This work compresses four hundred years of Maltese history in a timeline
highlighting two distinct wars, that of the Knights of St. John against the Ottoman Empire
in 1565 and World War II in the 1940s. The animation uses the relevant flag shapes and
colours as its linking nodes between one era and another to end on the flag of its last
occupant, the British Empire. The piece portrays the locals as brave defenders of their
territory, an emblematic characteristic which is deeply embedded in the islanders’
patriotic sensibility to date.

Ruth Bianco makes indirect reference to this defensive sensibility and counterbalances it
through another notable trait of the Maltese, that of inherent hospitality. In ‘Maryan and
Rahma’, a work born out of an artist’s collaboration with asylum seekers, the artist uses
the same language of television reportage to highlight the topical issue of irregular
immigration to the Maltese islands in a moving interview with two Somali refugees.

The women recount their fleeing with the rest of the family consisting of the father and
another two sons from war torn Somalia to Libya where the father found work as a
teacher and earned enough money for the family to live comfortably. After the father lost
his job, they were forced to return to their country, which naturally they could not do due
to civil unrest, so the father sent Maryan and the three children on a boat to Malta. He
followed in a separate trip by sea but unfortunately died tragically during the crossing
due to rough weather and a lack of food and water.

The video piece sensitively targets the frictional gaps between human aspiration, flight,
difference and intrusion through Maryan and Rahma’s account of the sad, difficult and
humbling conditions they found themselves in after the crossing with hardly any money,
no belongings, language barriers and worst of all a great sense of isolation. The work is
a testimony of human aspiration, it is a poignant plea for life’s normality, peace of mind,
education and happiness – for a quality of life many of us relish and take for granted.

‘The Sign’ by Norbert Francis Attard is a direct reference to the fine line separating
spiritual devotion and religious fanaticism. It visually deals with the ritual hand motion
tracing the shape of the cross on the upper half of the body by members of the many
branches of Christianity. The work shows an obsessive repetition of this act to a sound
track of varied tempos, a ‘performance’ by a conditioned personality which, through its
nauseating recurrence loses sight of the signified and all symbolism to, in the artist’s
own words, place the same performer’s soul in jeopardy.

‘The Lonesome death of Hattie Carroll’ by Austin Camilleri is a video work which takes
its name from a song by Bob Dylan recorded in 1963 which comments on the racism of
the 1960s and the murder of a black woman whose life is valued so lightly. The work
consists of a three channel video which questions the notion of reality and truth in a
contemporary Big Brother society, where roles and performances are portrayed as the
currency of human interaction. Camilleri presents us a trio of performers – a young lady
putting on makeup, a crying infant and the famous Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja taking
off his stage makeup after an opera performance in Vienna.

The three videos framed in a triptych reminiscent of religious imagery, undulate between
the extreme roles we play in societal life; from relative anonymity to iconic status. This is
carried through the symbolic acts of putting on and taking off theatrical makeup. The
work also makes reference to the various characters and alternative personalities each
and every one of us assume during the course of our Jeckyll and Hyde lifetimes, many
times drowning our inner authenticity and transforming us into a mere image of who we
really are, at times even beyond recognition.

In the actual murder trial of 1963 in Baltimore, Maryland, the accused, twenty-four-yearold
Billy Zantzinger claimed that he was extremely drunk and he admitted to no memory
of the attack on the fifty-one-year-old black barmaid, Hattie Carroll…

© Vince Briffa ARTIST & CURATOR

http://www.re-title.com/artists/vince-briffa.asp