Human beings have engaged in artistic endeavours for thousands of years. There seems to be a need within us to express symbolically our inner states of being and the external events that surround us. Life beckons us to question, challenge, articulate and reimagine.

But how does the artist live through the artistic process? A select group of people from within the human community have always been chosen, in the name of all the community, to portray works of art. Artists have received stardom and appreciation, revered but also rebuked for what they produced.

Our usually rushed visits through museums give us barely enough time to appreciate all that goes on in creating a work of art, the painstaking preparatory work and the techniques, the refinements, the rethinking involved as a work is finally created. We only see the final product of a long creative process.

It was an enriching experience a couple of weeks ago to hear directly from an artist what it means to engage in art, living it as a work and a vocation. Meeting the artist Vince Briffa at MSSP Oratory and hearing his testimony opened for us a whole new horizon on many different levels.

Art has the vocation of leading us out on this spiritual journey, challenging our concepts and opening our eyes to what is in front of us

First, it showed what a complex undertaking it is to be an artist, to consciously inhabit that in-betweenness of life, between life’s dualities that society is not very keen on handling.

The process of engaging a concept (psychological, social or ecological) that the artist deems important for himself or society is one that most often we lazily refuse to do, or rather, choose to delegate to others. Important contemporary art often challenges our sensibility because it does not present us with a figurative picture of reality. The artist’s noble vocation is to be the restless heart among those who have settled their life expectations or have unconsciously started wandering about blindly through life.

In a culture that is becoming all the more technical and monetised (even art itself is not immune to the latter!), art can become the necessary prophetic voice. In a culture where meaning is flattened down to that which falls under our noses, horizons need widening and concepts need challenging. More often than not, we are neither taught nor encouraged to think differently. We are highly opinionated, but our opinions are often superficial and have not gone through the sieve of honesty and the hard work that is life.

Our encounter with Briffa was a courageous experiment of an artist who was able to be vulnerable with his work in front of an audience. By giving us a peek into his thoughts and emotions, we could better appreciate his work, even in the technical sense of the word. The audience, composed mostly of people who are interested but not necessarily fluent in art, could concretely engage with both the artist and his work.

We need more of such spaces that are educating. Etymologically, the word ‘education’ means ‘leading out’, bringing forth from within the one who desires to learn all that they need to form themselves. Art has that vocation, of leading us out on this spiritual journey, challenging our concepts and opening our eyes to what is in front of us. When artists meet their audiences, something important happens, the restlessness becomes contagious.

 

oratory@mssp.mt