Two international artists are addressing political and social awareness in today’s world with a double-solo show at Blitz in Valletta.

Use From Below showcases works by Amsterdam-based Turkish artist Ahmet Öğüt and Italian Adelita Husni-Bey, who works in New York, the US. Both Mr Öğüt and Ms Husni-Bey have represented their countries at the Venice Biennale and exhibited extensively in international museums such as Tate Modern in London, MoMA and New Museum in New York, Maxxi Museum in Rome and Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, among other prestigious venues.

The Swinging Doors (2009-2019) by Mr Öğüt is made up of original riot shields. Ms Husni-Bey’s Agency – Giochi di Potere (2014) shows in the background.

“We think this show is very timely as it addresses a new, contagious sociopolitical awareness that has brought people out of the echo-chambers of social media and back in the streets to fight basic rights,” curator Sara Dolfi Agostini says. 

“This phenomenon has prompted international media to ask whether today we are all activists. Besides, what can we really do when it comes to systemic forces like capitalism, globalisation, automation and climate change?”

The title of the exhibition is inspired by the work of Columbia University professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and which, in Ms Dolfi Agostini’s words, “is an encouragement to stay real against intellectual speculations and abstractions, hold to our power and take action”.

The curator explains that Ms Husni-Bey’s work is rooted in sociology and anarcho-collectivist pedagogy. Anarcho-collectivism is also referred to as ‘revolutionary socialism’.

“She believes in the power of conflict to advance change in our communities and in the need to recontextualise protests against systemic forces like globalisation and climate change in a historical perspective to resist the inadequacy of virtual reality and social media,” the curator says.

Among the Italian artist’s works is the video installation Agency ‒ Giochi di potere (2014), for which she involved 35 students from Manara High School in Rome in a role-play activity that took place at the Italian capital’s Maxxi Museum.

The experiment, inspired by a citizenship class exercise originally developed in the UK, saw the students divided into five categories – journalists, politicians, workers, activists and bankers.

“The journalists were responsible for an hourly report on the advancement of society, while the other groups were developing strategies to seize power,” Ms Dolfi Agostini explains.

“The simulation was interrupted by planned moments of reflection and critique of the role-play itself, as well as by debates on the social side-effects of the groups’ choices or the meaning of strategies to retain power.”

Story of the Heavens and Our Planet (2008) by Adelita Husni-Bey

Another video – Story of the Heavens and Our Planet (2008) – takes on the format of a documentary to depict life in two tree-sitting UK protest camps in order to stop logging companies from cutting down forests. 

“As a form of non-violent activist practice, tree sitting has complemented the legal pursuit of formal protection for trees in courts since the late 1960s, advocating a communal proximity to nature that reverberates with the pacific tree protests held in Malta since spring 2019,” the curator notes.

On the other hand, Mr Öğüt’s work stems from an acknowledgement of the “ambiguity of every advancement” in society. 

He tackles it through the use of irony, social ‘ready-mades’ – existing objects with specific functions that he repurposes in the context of the art space − and creative gestures that redefine daily experiences. 

For example, one of the artworks, The Swinging Doors (2009-2019), presents two original riot shields of the Malta police force which are repurposed as swinging doors.

In the artist’s hand, they become a tool for remembering and question who we are today through the lens of the past

“These doors can connect – or separate – two spaces, depending on the visitor’s will to go through them. If so, the shields cease to be a restriction and become a ‘method of passage’, meant to inspire a physical ‘action of resistance’,” Ms Dolfi Agostini says.

Another one of his works, titled Possibly Self-Made Mail Art Archive (2019), was commissioned by Blitz and was prompted by Mr Öğüt’s discovery of a number of old Maltese envelopes carrying special graphics and stamps.

“In the artist’s hand, they become a tool for remembering and question who we are today through the lens of the past,” Ms Dolfi Agostini remarks. “As they re-enact their original mission of linking local and global narratives within the artist’s political agenda, the envelopes also reveal his attempt to invoke a space for both the symbolic realm of radical art history and daily social interaction.”

Mr Öğüt’s Possibly Self-Made Mail Art Archive (2019) features 10 historical Maltese envelopes, with the artist’s intervention of copies of mail art gestures, stamps, notes taken from the matching year of mail art examples of several artists.

The Turkish artist also presents a series of 10 drawings accompanied by a typewritten textbox, titled Fantasised Fantastic Corporeal World (2019). These vignettes, according to the curator, are actual stories published in local newspapers that single out extraordinary experiences – from racial segregation to border control, currency deregulation, issuing passports to non-human entities, or creating fake embassies “where law enforcement is out of reach”.

Another interesting piece on display is This Area Is Under 23 Hours Video and Audio Surveillance (2009), a replica of a street sign that implies that in today’s society, people live almost under constant surveillance.

One can view and reflect on these artworks for a couple of more days as the exhibition will come to a close on Saturday. One can visit Blitz, at 68, St Lucy Street, Valletta, today and tomorrow from 2.30 to 6.30pm and on Saturday from 10am to 1pm. 

This Area is Under 23 Hours Video and Audio Surveillance (2009) by Mr Öğüt is printed on an aluminum plate.

The exhibition, however, extends beyond these galleries, with Mr Öğüt’s breakthrough artwork Somebody Else’s Car (2005) being displayed in the shop window of Wembley Store in Republic Street, Valletta, every day from 7pm. This slide projection is about the transformative power of art in the public space and the car as a symbol of our economy and society. 

Another video by Ms Husny-Bei, The Convention on the Use of Space (2015-ongoing), which addresses the use and value of public space, is on display at the University of Malta thanks to a collaboration with the Society for Architecture and Civil Engineering Students (Saces).

Visit https://thisisblitz.com/ for more info.

After 7pm, Wembley Store in Republic Street is displaying Mr Öğüt’s Somebody Else’s Car (2005), a slide projection made up of a 20-piece photo series.