Silvio John Camilleri is holding his fourth solo exhibition at the Wignacourt Museum in Rabat. The artist’s new series follows on from previous work showcasing his fascination with urban environments as evidenced by the dominant flyover motif.
However, this collection accords more focus to the dynamic interplay between human life and the urban context. Camilleri aims to draw attention to how urban life can – in his own words – “alienate and dehumanise us”.
This series comprises 28 works, most of which were created using acrylics, with the rest being painted on paper with ink and watercolours. Stylistically, the works are surrealist, fusing elements of reality and fantasy – hence the ‘dreamscapes’ in the exhibition title.
This can be said to mirror today’s real-virtual, unmediated-mediated worlds, further lending itself to the contemporary currency of this show. The bold, rough brushstrokes in contrasting colours draw us in to the characters’ world and serve to accentuate the tensions of urban ennui and angst.
The predominant backdrop in the paintings is constituted of flyovers and supporting columns. The artist envisages this backdrop as “a visual metaphor for the cold, impersonal nature of the urban lifestyle and its rigid customs”.
From a sociopolitical viewpoint, the flyover motif doubles as a powerful emblem of the neoliberal urban context shaping human behaviour, and of Marc Augé’s conceptualisation of ‘non-places’.
Non-places serve as passages for anonymous people and are alienating places in which no organic social life is possible. Another nod to non-places is the anonymity of most of the depicted faces, which the artist links to the fast-paced rhythm of contemporary life and to a lack
of deep connectedness. Facial anonymity may thus serve to enhance the viewers’ experience of identifying with characters and inhabiting their spaces.
The artist engages in a provocative study of how people are shaped by and respond to the contemporary context. Broadly speaking, the artist conceives of two sets of characters: those living in the mainstream, represented in six paintings depicting humanoids; and those living on the fringes of society, depicted in the other 22 paintings.
The exhibits show how both sets are susceptible to psychological and social alienation. The humanoid series, in which humanoids are represented – in a smaller scale and in a more linear-like sequence going about their daily business – encapsulates the gnawing sense of alienation people feel running the modern-day rat race.
The other works themed around living on the fringes are edgier and racier, and feature more prominent symbols of alienation. People depicted living under bridges and in cardboard boxes may serve as metaphor for housing issues and poverty.
The cardboard box can also be interpreted as metaphor for consumption and waste, as does the dustbin, another recurrent motif. Cigarettes and drink occur occasionally in the artist’s work, potentially indicative of decadence or substance abuse.
If the artist explicitly set out to explore alienation, he has also uncannily managed to portray its association with the lack of ethical or social standards, one of the defining characteristics of Émile Durkheim’s concept of anomie.
The artist engages in a provocative study of how people are shaped by and respond to the contemporary context
Social scientific literature has yielded empirical evidence of correlations between measures of social well-being, alienation, and perceived anomie.
These links are best portrayed in his two versions of This last night in Sodom. Although the city of Sodom tends to be synonymous with the sin of sexual immorality, scholars have argued that its failings were essentially in social justice.
In these works, the artist pictorially fuses our current chronosystem with that of the city of Sodom, drawing parallels between the failings in social justice then and now. Parallels are also drawn between the flight of the family of Lot from the destruction of Sodom and the plight of migrants in search of a better life or our attempts at flight from reality.
The artist is keen to highlight the human potential for resilience and transcendence. Symbolic of resilience is the motif of limbs throughout the work.
Limbs can be linked to the surrealist tendency to produce images with an erotic dimension, driven partly by surrealists’ fascination with Freudian theory. But they can also be linked to the theme of this exhibition and to resilience from the lens of another psychoanalytic theory – Jungian analysis.
From the viewpoint of Jungian analysis, dismemberment can be symbolically linked to alienation and anomie in terms of dissociated or dismembered experiences, but also to the potential for human resilience and growth via the processes of ‘re-membering’ and reintegration.
Cardboard Box City No. 4The artist’s positioning in relation to the dynamics of urban life departs from the trend of urban life artists to position themselves solely as outsiders. The term flâneur, popularised in 19th-century Paris, and used in the works of French poet Charles Baudelaire, depicts an urban male stroller, detached from society, absorbing city sights for entertainment.
Art critic Maxwell Rabb wrote that in depicting city scenes, many contemporary artists embody the spirit of the flâneur by taking in city sights without becoming an active participant.
Not so Camilleri. A very-self reflexive artist, he discusses the different sides to him, and in so doing, shows how he identifies with both types of characters depicted in his work.
Insider positioning can also be gleaned from what he describes as “a sort of self-portrait” appearing in several of his works.
The artist used selfies as models for his depiction of the predominant male face appearing repeatedly in this show, although he stresses that this exercise was not intended as self-portraiture. In this sense, he refutes full insider status.
I borrow Pater Gay’s sub-title of his book on Weimar culture “outsider as insider” to best describe the artist’s positionality in regard to his show.
The artist invites readers to visit the show and engage with his works in an exploration of how they position themselves in relation to the dynamics of urban life.
Urban Dreamscapes is being held at the Wignacourt Museum, Rabat, and remains open until Saturday, January 25. Further information may be obtained from the artist’s social media profiles.