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This second edition of the exhibition Homo Melitensis revisits an associative exploration of Maltese identity originally curated for the Malta Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia in 2017. The first room offers a documentary view of the 2017 pavilion while the second room is a new installation.Eight years later, “Maltese Man” still resides on an ancient island whose inhabitants are perpetually perplexed by their inability to agree about their country’s nationhood, dreams, memories and relationships with strangers. What remains is a cryptic, inconsistent and contradictory inventory, seen through a multifaceted lens colored by artworks, objects and documents. Convictions about the search for a consistent identity seem to evade the onlooker - the only thing which remains certain is the eternal tension between the disappearing imaginaries of an ancestral past and a free-market conception of an idyllic future
In this second edition, even the distinctive boundaries of chapters evaporate, as objects glide into the midst of neighbouring territories. Homo Melitensis drifts between epochs, trying to make sense of an identity that constantly escapes his grasp. As an answer about Maltese identity slips through history’s fingers and falls into the affluent lap of aggressive speculators, we realise that the last bastion of hope probably resides in our ability to think in riddles and reimagine the (still) missing pieces of our puzzling life stories. Even then, this exhibition does not guarantee salvation. It merely invites you to sign up for a journey; a journey through millennia of ritualistic relics, strangers’ traces, cartographic dreams, celebrations and genetic codes; a journey through artworks that subvert what we think we know.
Faced by a tangle of bumpy island paths, Homo Melitensis picks up the elements as he trusts his luck to find himself, anywhere. So do you, onlooker, cast into this exhibition of an insatiable labyrinth that swallows up whoever dares to enter it.
Artist-curators: Bettina Hutschek, Raphael Vella
Artists 2025 edition: Adrian Abela, Aaron Bezzina, Pia Borg, Gilbert Calleja, Austin Camilleri, Romeo Roxman Gatt, David Pisani, Karine Rougier, Joe Sacco, Teresa Sciberras, Darren Tanti, Maurice Tanti Burlò
Exhibition Architect: Tom Van Malderen
Graphic Design: 2point3
Commissioner: Arts Council Malta facebook.com/ArtsCouncilMalta
Supported by: Heritage Malta
3 October-2 November, 2025
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
MUŻA, St. Catherine of Italy, Triq il-Merkanti, Valletta, VLT, Malta
