FEET – photographic installation

SEPTEMBER 25 – OCTOBER 10 – MERCHANT STREET, VALLETTA

Why FEET? This is an original project which will bring out the diversities of life and at the same time it reflects today’s realities and challenges. Any theme is a challenge for any artist. And any theme can be a source of inspiration.

FEET – is an interesting theme that surely provoked the participating artists to look at their creativity from a different angle, with beautiful and surprising results. A painter-artist, Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci and a Photographer-artist Omar Camilleri were brought together by Josephine Vassallo, who instigated this event and together, three people from different spheres and professions had to see and interpret reality through the concept and visual parameters of ‘feet’.

The installation is a path between death-rebirth-birth. A continuous passage, a continuous pilgrimage leading to what one may believe in. The photo material was carefully chosen to reflect this particular element. As in nature which is full of cylical repetitions, the photo development underlines similarly this cyclic character. One keeps on toiling and getting back onto a similar position of toil, sufferance and death. Toiling, life, love, death, birth, toiling, life, love, death, rebirth, toiling, life, love, death, rebirth. The work, a cooperation between three individuals stemming from different fields and beliefs succeeded to synthesise their artistic differences in one organic entity. Josephine with her pragmatic-managerial skills and acute artistic eye, with Giuseppe’s philosophical-artistic stubbornness, coupled with Omar’s love of technical perfection, all went into this fascinating

result. The installation is the result of more than three months of love and work—more than three thousand photographs were taken, – discussions, convincing, arguments and great solidarity – from which ninety were shortlisted, and further on 27 chosen. These 27 had to tell a story and as in life the story cannot be just a nice linear narrative, the story as in life has to have its distortions, its dead-ends, its sufferance. Artistically the method chosen was to install the works within a Maltese festa form i.e. within a ‘pavaljun’ form. Each pavaljun tells a story, sometimes in a sharp clear way, sometimes in a strange bizarre way and sometimes in a contorted way, as life itself is clear, contorted and bizarre. Each ‘pavaljun’ leads onto the other until a whole cycle with all its repetitions becomes manifest.

The installation tried to amalgamate the aesthetic element with the philosophical-spiritual task. Both had to be integrally and organically linked. Neither the aesthetic nor the philosophical-spiritual side had the right to overpower the other. Both are vitally necessary to create a work that must have meaning, existential meaning.

FEET is being brought to you thanks to the support of Bank of Valletta, Kinnie, Salvo Grima, The Merchants Street Business Community, Notte Bianca and Ladybird Organic Farm.