Artists
Jamie Barbara (MT), Keit Bonnici (MT), Florinda Camilleri (MT), Isaac Warrington (MT), Martinha Maia (PT), Justyna Olszewska (PL)
Curator
Elyse Tonna
Location
Dwejra Tower, San Lawrenz, Gozo
Period
24th June – 24th July
Exhibition: 19th – 28th July 2024
Curatorial Note
Beyond What Drifts Us Apart (BWDUA) is a multi-year research project uncovering the lesser-known narratives of the environments surrounding historic coastal towers in the Maltese Islands. As colonial legacies have dissipated over time, the cultural relevance of these coastal towers has diminished. In response, BWDUA challenges the colonial histories associated with these culturally significant sites, exploring the evolving relationships between the impacted landscapes and their non-human communities.
Adopting decolonial and post-anthropocentric perspectives, the project critiques the exploitation of natural systems leading to climate collapse and the proliferation of technological systems. It reconsiders visible and invisible dichotomies, addressing themes of new materialisms, extractive capitalism, and the contested status of seemingly untouched landscapes.
The four-week residency culminated in the co-creation of works addressing the untold, overlooked, unheard, and unseen stories of Dwejra in San Lawrenz. The creative team served as advocates, collaborators, and speculators, engaging sensitively with the non-human elements of the site. At Dwejra, BWDUA sought to understand the natural environment surrounding the tower, exploring its geology, ecology, and astronomy. As a protected Dark Sky Area and Natura 2000 site, Dwejra offers layers of complexity for investigation. The tower itself once served a dual observatory function, monitoring the coast and the Fungus Rock in Dwejra Bay.
Key themes guiding the curatorial research included the shearwaters and bats inhabiting the area, the Posidonia oceanica seagrass safeguarding underwater ecosystems, native and invasive species, the dark sky, embedded fossils in the rock formations, and the distinctive characteristics of the Fungus Rock. Each artist was invited to explore specific elements based on their interests and practices:
- Jamie Barbara amplified the voices of bats inhabiting the tower and its surroundings. In Falling on Deaf Ears, he documented their inaudible frequencies, transforming them into a site-specific installation.
- Keit Bonnici’s work encourages stillness and non-interventionist approaches. In Rest Island, Bonnici focuses on the Fungus Rock and Dwejra Bay, linking the area to the bumerin (Mediterranean monk seal) and overlapping its significance with the characteristics of the Fungus Rock.
- Florinda Camilleri created Għalik, Posidonia!, a performative piece blending contemporary movement with traditional Gozitan dance, symbolically expressing gratitude to Posidonia oceanica, the seagrass protecting Dwejra’s coastline.
- Martinha Maia personifies the tower and its surroundings as Sansuna, a mythical Gozitan woman symbolising fertility and resilience, drawing parallels with native species. She also explores the impact of invasive species and their role in the landscape.
- Justyna Olszewska’s Look Up! contrasts Dwejra Tower’s role as a coastal observatory with the Ggantija Temples, one of Gozo’s oldest sky observation sites. Her work examines the effects of light pollution, despite Dwejra’s status as a Dark Sky Area.
- Isaac Warrington’s Lithomorph investigates the cyclicality of decomposition and recomposition, intertwining these processes with human impacts on the fossil-rich rock formations surrounding Dwejra.
BWDUA at Dwejra extended beyond the core team to include several communities. Several individuals, organisations, initiatives and entities have facilitated the development of the projects through the sharing of information and research, exchange of ideas, participation in workshops and even through direct collaboration and co-creation of the works.
BWDUA, in general, is guided by the belief of giving agency to beyond-human communities through co-created artistic interventions and thus garnering an understanding of their validity in the understanding of the impacts of colonisation and beyond, to pave the way for the safeguarding of socio-environmental and cultural heritage aspects of threatened landscapes.
Curatorial text by Elyse Tonna