At the Malta Biennial, Italian artists reap the rewards
There were 11 authors (14.6%) out of 130 attendees. The event restores international visibility
Key points
At the Malta Biennale the Italian artists are there. The second edition, entitled 'Clean / Clear / Cut', is curated by artistic director Rosa Martínez. Organised by Heritage Malta, the event hosts more than 130 artists (including 11 Italians with 14.6%) representing some 43 countries until 29 May, and also includes 27 pavilions: eight national (Malta, Poland, France, Spain, Finland, Armenia, Serbia and China) and 19 thematic ones. The international exhibition and pavilions spread across 11 museums and historical sites in Heritage Malta stretches between Valletta, Vittoriosa, Victoria and Xaghra in Gozo, precisely because the Biennial was created with the aim of creating an open dialogue between past and present, between cultural heritage and contemporary art.
The Italians
If at the Biennale in Venice Italian artists will only be found in the collateral events and at Manifesta 16 Ruhr among the more than 100 artists there is no Italian, Malta on the other hand, thanks also to Italian curators, well highlights the work of Italian authors born between 1960 (Cattelan the best known and the most âgé with "Untitled", 2018, at the Grand Master's Palace, Valletta) and the late 1980s with the duo The Cool Couple. And there was no shortage of prizes: the Maltese Falcon was awarded for the best work is Concetta Modica (born 1969, Ragusa, lives and works in Milan) for 'Fragments of the sky of Malta: The journey of a tomato sepal to become a star'. His work focuses on the paradoxes of the present: the epic of a tomato sepal in terracotta and bronze that traces the path of the Biennale to become a star. The Galleria Pantaleone in Palermo has recently concluded an exhibition of his work: small ceramics are offered from 1,200 euro up to 10 thousand for larger works. Loredana Longo (1967, Catania, lives and works in Milan) presents 'The Mantle / Wearing My Loss', 2002-2025 in the Inquisitor's Palace in Birgu. His artistic practice ranges between installations, sculptures and performances, addressing themes such as power, violence and transformation. In Malta, the cloak/sculpture is made from her hair collected over the decades: it becomes a living archive of loss, illness and resistance, transforming personal trauma into a collective gesture of memory, purification and resistance at the Inquisitor's Palace. At Pantaleone's, his smaller works cost around 5,000 euro and his larger works up to 45,000.
The 'Aesthetics of the Apocalypse', 2017-2024 by Pamela Diamante (1985, Bari, lives and works ) at the Forte Sant'Angelo in Birgu deserves attention. In her multidisciplinary practice, which embraces photography, sculpture and installation, she explores the relationship between social classes and political and economic power structures. In the work in the Biennial, the viewer is confronted with an ongoing project consisting of photographic diptychs that juxtapose documentary images of natural and technological catastrophes with works of art by different artists. Through visual parallelisms, the work reflects on disaster as an aesthetic form and as a permanent condition that shapes the present. The exhibition "Le invisibili. Esistenze Radicali" and in June he inaugurates "Finding my religion", a group show curated by Franko B at Palazzo Lucarini Contemporary, Trevi, and in September a group show at Galleria Gilda Lavia, here his works have a quotation range of 2 - 50 thousand euro. Also at Forte Sant'Angelo, the installation "Their Eyes Have No Lids", 2019 by Salvatore Arancio (1974, Catania, lives between London and Nice), already present at international biennials such as Venice, Shenzhen and Quebec, investigates through a pedomorphic salamander from Mexico, the transformative potential of images, exploring the meeting points between myth, science, nature and spirituality. At Federica Schiavo Gallery in Rome, his works range from 2,500 to 80,000 euros, and he is also represented by Semiose in Paris.
Thematic pavilions
And then there are the Thematic Pavilions: at the Old Armoury in Birgu, Francesca Guerisoli curated the installation 'So Good to Feel Real' by the duo The Cool Couple (Niccolò Benetton, Chiampo 1986; Simone Santilli, Porto Gruaro 1987), an installation produced by the Oelle Foundation of Catania that tells how digital cultures transform violence and war into a playful spectacle with an increasing desensitisation towards real suffering. At MAAB Gallery and MLZ Art the range of photographs is between EUR 2-8,000, sculptures/objects between EUR 1-10,000 and paintings/drawings between EUR 1-5,000. Still at the Old Armoury in Birgu we find the thematic pavilion 'Repertoire in Intermedial Mode' by FRrancesco Bertelé (1978, lives in Canzo) who, through video, virtual reality and site-specific actions, reflects on migration, transformation and shifting borders. Aziza Shaden and Luca Resta (1982, Seriate, lives in Paris) sign the Sea Pavilion: Nothing Precious, Precious Nothing at Forte Sant'Elmo and the National War Museum, Valletta. Resta explores the social and cultural space in which he lives in order to refine a creative process linked to the practices of accumulation, reproduction and transformation; he is represented by Yvon Lambert (his sculptures range from 2,000 to 13,000 euros) and was also exhibited at 22.48 m² in Paris.
"Human Survival" at the MUŻA is by Sergio Racanati (1982, Bisceglie, where he lives and works). Racanati says: "My research in contemporary art is based on an approach that attempts to respond to political and social issues. The question of financing an artwork of mine that deals with 'burning' issues is extremely complex, especially considering that it is an activity that often defies social, political and economic conventions and with it formalities that are sometimes far removed from the idea of the art object that collecting is sometimes linked to. The first mode of support for my work is self-production. This approach implies a level of independence that allows one to remain true to one's principles and the content of the work, without constraints or compromises dictated by financiers or institutions. However, self-production is not always sustainable in the long term, as it requires one's own economic resources that may be limited. In this context, self-production becomes an act of resistance, a form of self-management in a field that often does not recognise the value of artistic work outside the commercial circuit'.
At the Armoury, we also find "Unwashed - Black Madonnas and White Lies" by Lanfranco Aceti, also an academic and curator, he is an associate professor in Contemporary Art and Digital Culture at Sabanci University in Istanbul. His interdisciplinary research focuses on the intersection of digital arts, visual cultures and new media technologies. He creates installations, public space projects, performances and exhibitions on topics such as social justice, post-democracy, migration, climate crisis, forms of resistance and matriarchal social assumptions. Finally, "Counterpoint Pavilion" with Iris Eysermans,Mahmoud Saleh Mohammadi and Maurizio Chiocchetti. He works mainly with black and white photography. His images arise from situations through which the visible flows, suspended between presence and absence. Not all of them are well-known artists, some active outside Italia, who exhibit works in Malta that well represent their artistic research path.
