Something About You is an exhibition currently going on at Blitz Gallery, Valletta. Curator SARA DOLFI AGOSTINI tells Joseph Agius about its concepts and the upcoming performance of the public participatory project The School of Narrative Dance.

JA: Contemporary art seeks a more active public engagement. How does a multidisciplinary artist like Marinella Senatore achieve this?

SDA: Art museums have shown their flaws in the past decade and even more during the pandemic. The biggest flaw has been an inability to connect to their communities, too often overshadowed by those same tourists who disappeared in the past two years. In Malta, where tourism and cosmopolitanism are a force of attraction, Blitz has always explored ways of bridging the international art scene with an eye on what artists like Marinella Senatore could bring to the local community. 

We reached out to her back in 2018; she has an extremely busy calendar but here she is, after a necessary postponement of her exhibition and performance of The School of Narrative Dance originally scheduled for May 2020.

Senatore is a terrific multidisciplinary artist whose methodology delves into practices of non-hierarchical learning and participatory art, exploring forms of resistance, vernacular and popular culture, dance, music and activism. 

The School of Narrative Dance, which will finally take place in Valletta’s Republic Street on June 30 (date to be confirmed) is a participatory project free of charge, centred on the emancipative power of storytelling, agency and public action. Participants will be also offered free workshops by the artist and her chief choreographer the week before the event.

Remember the First Time You Saw Your Name, 2020. Photo courtesy the artist

JA: This exhibition redefines and reconfigures the idea of gallery space by recontextualising the exhibiting dimension to the outdoors. One of the exhibits, Remember the First Time You Saw Your Name, in fact, is a neon which hangs on the iron trelliswork of the Casino Maltese balcony. What were the spectators’ reactions to this installation?

SDA: Working in the public space is a true challenge but it is also where the unexpected happens. It is the only space where you can share an artwork with people that have not deliberately chosen to come and see art. You can hardly have 100 per cent approval on anything you do but that is not really the point anyway. You want to inspire a dialogue, sometimes based on tough subjects, as well as offer a moment of poetry to create a deeper connection between the viewer and the society we live in. 

Remember the First Time You Saw Your Name (2020) presents the powerful phrase in a bold red light composition dominating St George Square, Valletta, at a time when naming – once rooted in community, tradition and family history – is now more and more driven by factors such as the unique branding effect of social media, the desire to ‘fit in’, or an emphasis on regional diversity in a globalised world. 

And, yet, in each and every one of these cases, names still rhyme with the self and identify individuals in the communities to which they belong. The artwork is also an enchanting blast from the past, evoking the Maltese custom of celebrating community during village festas or annual events with festoons and luminarie. Here, hanging from the façade of the Casino Maltese, Senatore’s light sculpture finds a symbolic home to rethink and recontextualise Maltese identity historically and in present terms. 

All Good, 2018. Photo courtesy the artist and Galleria Mazzoleni, London – Turin

JA: Senatore obviates, in the above-mentioned case, the necessity to visit a space specifically dedicated to art. The entreaty as an act of memory is a simple one as the artist and the art itself invite the Valletta-visiting public to an exercise in memory and reflection. In which way are the reactions documented? Or this is not necessary?

SDA: We do have a relevant presence on social media; we are actually the most prominent independent contemporary art space in Malta on Facebook with 4,600 followers, which matters because 90 per cent of the entire Maltese population has an account. However, I think it is important to track feelings and feedback, while making sure you base your artistic decisions on thoughts and ideas whose foundations are a critical reflection of art and society. Facebook is a powerful tool for entertainment; contemporary art can entertain, yet,  it is mostly about exploring who we are and how we should be represented in our society for present and future generations. 

JA: This exhibition has a timeline of 10 years. Much has happened during this decade. Would you say that it had an improvisational aspect as events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, happened in the meantime? Did events factor into the fabric of the project? Is the project about chronology as well?

SDA: When Blitz invites an international artist to Malta, it puts forward two requests: to commit to a survey exhibition in order for our community to have a broader framework to understand the art and to produce a new artwork, possibly locally – as Malta is a great laboratory for ideas and production. Its small size is convenient to get a sense of what is going on and, yet, it offers so much in terms of diverse collaborations, craftsmanship and inspiration. This said, because Senatore’s exhibition and the Malta iteration of The School of Narrative Dance were originally scheduled for 2020, during the first COVID-19 wave, we used the extra time and experience to reinforce our original project, which kept growing more urgent and necessary. 

The exhibition at Blitz, a collaboration with Russian protest group Pussy Riot, questions freedom of speech and expression in the wake of the Ukraine-Russia war that is making us reflect on sudden subversions of democratic order. 

Moreover, The School of Narrative Dance has turned into an even greater celebration of the individual and the collective, the private and the public self, with a stronger focus on inclusivity and on experiencing community building outside of our comfort zones and ordinary social lives.

Protest Bike, 2016-2018. Photo courtesy the artist and Galleria Mazzoleni, London – Turin

JA: I believe that street performing is one of the disciplines investigated. One needs streets and people for this to be possible. A city such as Valletta is all about its streets, lined with palaces, cathedrals and houses. Was Valletta itself the gallery space in this case? Did Senatore externalise Blitz gallery on to the streets of our capital city with the inside and outside being versions of each other? Is this what The School of Narrative Dance is about? 

SDA: For Senatore, the street is the material space for action, or the “space of appearance”, to borrow Hannah Arendt’s terminology: a non-neutral plot between people, it participates in the performance with its own story. 

“Malta is a great laboratory for ideas and production”

The School of Narrative Dance in Malta takes over Republic Street in Valletta, a symbolic path for many. A witness to historical events, of destruction and regeneration, a meeting place for friends and a public patio for ceremonies, celebrations and assembles, Republic Street truly belongs to the Maltese people. 

It is also Malta’s emotional barometer, busy with life but hollowed out like a skeleton during the pandemic – when its emptiness on a typical working day suddenly revealed the unsettled sense of powerlessness in front of the unknown.

Our open call to participate in The School of Narrative Dance in Malta will be a unique occasion to reappropriate public space and celebrate togetherness, inclusivity and diversity after the pandemic. The resulting video and photographs will tour the most relevant international museums as part of the archive of this terrific project which has been experienced by 6.5 million people in 24 countries since 2012. 

At Blitz, the street is still as central in the artist’s practice. On the ground floor of the exhibition, we find over 30 drawings from the series It’s Time to Go Back to the Street (2021) sourced from her archive of protest forms. They are meticulous studio reproductions with pencil and charcoal on paper of public gatherings with students, workers’ unions, gymnasts, nurses and brass bands, where their collective bodies seem to perform a universal language inspired by togetherness and dignity. They are just another example, alongside the Protest Bike (2016-18) and the banners also exhibited here, of how art can move people, outdoors and indoors, in the streets just like in the gallery. 

JA: Cities, especially capital cities, are the backdrops for social unrest and upheaval. Valletta has a history of turbulence and political turmoil as well, immortalised in some monuments that line its squares and streets. Does Senatore’s art need history and demography to be more effective or does it transcend both?

SDA: As many artists working on the politics of representation, Senatore is focused on the history of a place and the fight for identity and recognition. However, her work is not about taking a specific stance or bringing just another ideology into the street. The School of Narrative Dance is not about carrying one message, it is about agency, diversity and inclusion. Each one of us is multifaceted, as American poet Walt Whitman wrote in Leaves of Grass (1891-92), later quoted by Bob Dylan and Senatore herself.  We all contain multitudes. My hope is people will take this performance as a chance to break free from their comfort zone and learn something about each other and about cohabitation on this beautiful rock.

JA: “Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful and everything conceals something else,” quoting from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Are their parallels in this with Senatore’s The School of Narrative Dance? Are both of them exercises in recontextualisation, in redefining ‘parameters’?

SDA: I would say Senatore’s work is all about decontextualisation and redefining the borders rather than the parameters. From two-dimensional works such as collages and drawings, to sculptures and installations, Senatore remixes materials as diverse as cut-outs and objets trouvés, ribbons, construction tape and musical scores with quotes that range from playwright Samuel Beckett and poet Whitman to folk songs and collective rallying cries.

Her discourse is postmodern; it does not distinguish between so-called low and high culture and all emphasis is always on the individuals, their voices and their hidden potential. Senatore embraces the power of decontextualisation to push for change and empowerment, open up conceptual windows into an ever-changing humanity represented in plural form. It does matter where we start from – the desires and fears − but what matters even more is the journey forward.

The School of Narrative Dance, 2012-ongoing. Photo courtesy the artist

Something About You is hosted by Blitz Gallery, St Lucy Street, Valletta. The exhibition will be extended to July 23 so a photograph of the Malta chapter of The School of Narrative Dance can be added to the current display on the occasion of the finissage. To apply for free for The School of Narrative Dance, visit www.blitzvalletta.com. Log on to the gallery’s Facebook page for more information.