Curator Nicole Parnis speaks to Lara Zammit about the collective of artists currently on display at DESKO in Valletta. 

LZ: Following the first instalment of CURRENT/S in February 2021, the second exhibition in the series is set to showcase current works by five emergent artists, namely Ġulja Holland, Rhea Micallef-Gavin, Tina Mifsud, Maria Borg and Marie Claire Farrugia. What is the scope of the CURRENT/S series and what is the theme of this instalment specifically?

NP: The CURRENT/S series sets out to give airtime to emerging Maltese artists to showcase their current work. It’s a snapshot into the studios of practising artists who are set on this career path. There is no given theme to the exhibitions – it is exactly what it says on the tin. It showcases artists whose work, as curator, I find to be nailing the current zeitgeist.

The word ‘current’ also has connotations to the “new wave” of Maltese artists and their dynamism: their electricity. I feel this electricity ignites when they come together in the gallery space and bounce ideas off each other – sometimes knowing each other from “the scene” and sometimes meeting each other for the first time. I find this very special.

Morning Rituals, 2021, Oil and pastel on canvas, Tina Mifsud

LZ: The exhibition showcases works by exclusively female artists. What role does the artists’ gender play in the dynamics of the exhibition, if at all?

NP: The first edition of CURRENT/S happened very much by accident. The artists were thrown together somewhat when three university students had queried about the gallery space seeing as they didn’t get to have a final show due to COVID-19.

To make up the numbers to fill the exhibition space, I roped in two other artists. They happened to be an all-female group and I was quite pleased with this considering we very often see all male shows locally. It was definitely not done on purpose.

With CURRENT/S II, I set about picking a new bunch of artists to “recruit”. All the names I had my eye on happened to be female. Gender is not an issue for me in the scope of this series. I like what I like and aim to keep the spots in future editions open to all.

Thirty, 2021. Oil on canvas by Ġulja Holland

The role of the artists’ gender, however, has most certainly come into play within both shows. Both tackle hard-hitting topics specific to the sex of the artists, as well as their gender. Themes hard-hitting to people with female sex organs – like abortion and fertility – have been tackled in both CURRENT/S and CURRENT/S II respectively. In this show, we also get to grips with male-on-female domestic violence. There’s a lot to say in female art.

LZ: How would you describe the character of the artworks of each artist generally? How do the works harmonise together to make this a cohesive exhibition?

NP: Marie Claire Farrugia’s pop art mixed media offerings give the exhibition some irony to the other more traditional mediums. Her work deals with the false narrative we’re often exposed to online. It’s figurative but the artist doesn’t have a “body-positive” or “skinny shaming” agenda. The body used in this case is a vehicle for the artist’s mark-making to show how things can be distorted.

Coming off the Pill, 2021. Oil paint and oil pastel on recycled paper by Rhea Micallef-Gavin

Ġulja Holland’s somewhat gory, fleshy work on canvas actually deals with tender self-actualisation and female existentialism. Entitled Thirty, it’s about the age-old, less spoken about “female midlife crisis” around that age. Do you want a family or not? A career? Can you have both? Do you end up with nothing if you ponder on it all too much?

Rhea Micallef-Gavin’s works from her Smoking Flowers series are the most “femme”. If you’re seeking out the feminine aesthetic within the show, Micallef-Gavin has it in spades, from the chintzy interiors to bulbous tulips playing on female anatomy. Her work explores gender and identity through our immediate surroundings such as fashion and furniture. “Smoking is something we do when we’re trying to figure it all out,” says the artist.

Maria Borg’s instalment from her series of paintings of text found within the creases of fabric take on intimate relationships. With Borg’s CURRENT/S II piece Out of Love, the artist drew from song lyrics about a jealous partner attempting to justify his violence as being out of “love”. 

Out of Love, 2021. Oil on canvas by Maria Borg

Tina Mifsud’s large-scale work on canvas Morning Ritual is a more botanical take on her bathing series. A male figure in an overgrown garden takes a splash in an outdoor basin. We can only question what the presence of water in so many of Mifsud’s works means within the context of her paintings. To bathe is to get clean, to refresh, reinvent and baptise oneself.

CURRENT/S II hopes to be the birth of many years of success in each artists’ practice.

CURRENT/S II is showing at DESKO until October 12.