Space is running out fast on this small island nation of ours, population is the densest in Europe, we place close to first in pollution surveys, green spaces are considered as cash cows for unscrupulous so-called developers, a building frenzy whose defining characteristic is its most hideous aesthetic has taken over.

Il-Festin (Little Feast)

We are being suffocated out of our existence, out of our land, metaphorically and literally running out of breath. The sea and the sky offer some scant sort of relief from the overpowering claustrophobic nightmare. Quality of life has indeed become a misnomer in a Maltese context as it has gone to the dogs.

Dominique Ciancio’s exhibition Return Island explores this dystopic reality whose emerging idiosyncrasies are more pronounced, especially for the artist who spends a considerable proportion of his days away from the din and the excesses that have become our way of life. Ciancio returns periodically to the island after time in Norway, which is his second home.

The pandemic has restricted his travelling and, therefore, has exacerbated his misgivings. The Scandinavian perspective that a healthy environment is of the essence and of prime importance jars with Malta’s lust for the quick buck. Who cares if, five to 10 years down the line, our children would suffer the irreparable consequences of irresponsible decisions. Gluttony, a national trait, runs deep in more ways than one.

Paniġierku (Panegyric)

The painting Return Island, also the title of the exhibition, portrays eloquently the ethos of the exhibition. There is a sense of helplessness in the facial expression of the person looking skywards for heavenly guidance. The overcast leaden sky doesn’t promise anything good, the heavens are menacing a downpour and the sea, although tranquil, is foreboding as well as one can easily succumb to apathy and drown in it. One is reminded of the martyrdoms in Christian iconography, the resigned saint hopeful that celestial deliverance would soon be forthcoming. Most of us are enduring our country’s martyrdom on the altar of mammon while our quality of life, our architectural legacy, our agriculture, the air we breathe, and country’s very soul, are relentlessly destroyed.

Ciancio crowns some of the protagonists of his paintings. At times, the crown is suggested, ready to disappear like a morning mist. At other times, it takes the shape of a paper crown that one finds in crackers and at feasts. The artist admits that Romanian artist Corneliu Baba’s 1986 Mad King series might have offered a springboard for the concept. One is also reminded of German expressionist Max Beckmann’s paintings of crowned personages.

Il-Festin (Little Feast) strongly draws on Maltese tradition as the artist masterfully integrates a stereotypical Maltese mother-son relationship in which a fully-grown big man has still not managed to do his own thing, to leave the strangling comfort zone of family connections.

The artist has indeed captured the zeitgeist of the times in this collection of paintings in which the boundaries between reality and allegory are blurred

Resolution

The underlying theme of claustrophobia takes on a new dimension in this painting – the overpowering mother who is coming to terms with her own daemons in the probable recent death of her husband, judging by her demeanour and by her dress in monochromatic mourning, and who cannot afford to suffer another separation in the family. Her son could be the birthday boy whom she’s keeping under close scrutiny lest some other interest takes him away from her.

This poignantly sad painting illustrates filial obedience at all costs, tiny chihuahua and all. The succulent and popular plant Ilsien in-Nisa (translated as ‘women’s tongues’) is semiotically very relevant as the inherent shape of its leaves evokes long tongues. The portly man won’t risk a tongue lashing from his mum, so he quietly feasts on a pea pastizz and a cup of tea. He nervously thumbs a message on his mobile phone, scared that the matriarch might surreptitiously attempt a glance at the message exchange. He is painfully uncomfortable in his own skin, a restraining, domineering matronly hand on his shoulder. In Maltese jargon, pastizz also stands for someone who doesn’t rebel and is meek.

The caged finch’s symbolism is obvious, while the flock of birds fly away in a blue sky with only a slight smattering of cloud.

The celebratory rooftop party is a typical Maltese phenomenon, colourful festoons and all. Spring could be in season, judging by the clothes worn as determined by the vagaries of that season’s weather.  

L-Istennija (The Awaiting)

Paniġierku (Panegyric) focuses on two crowned partygoers, pandemic masks pulled down for a freer conversation and a more efficient distribution of viruses. Ciancio has captured the dynamics of the dialogue in the body language. One of the men is opinionated, patronising and delivers a paniġierku (long sermon), while the other is diffident of his friend’s volley of words, uncomfortably tolerating the verbal onslaught.

In both these paintings, dualities are stark and telling. Rooftop agoraphobia meets on the horizon with the claustrophobia of vernacular architecture, church included, overwhelmed and blighted by the cranes and the high rises. There is an overbearing sense of being progressively hemmed in, in all respects, and that this party, a happy occasion celebrating the friend or relative, is more about an existential discomfort across the board.

The Golden Hour, besides its strange narrative, is a very disconcerting composition, surreal in content but grounded geographically to a popular Maltese locality – the Nazzarenu church in Sliema and its immediate neighbourhood. The shuttered burger-joint franchise, the lonely palm tree, the stark incident sun and the road, uncharacteristically devoid of traffic, evoke a sense of urban desolation one finds in Giorgio de Chirico’s and Mario Sironi’s cityscapes. 

The party seems to be well and truly over, the seated affluent girl has removed her expensive-looking shoes; the storyline remains elusive, it might as well be a contemporary fairy tale with a morale of loss and retribution. One of the girls is despondently seated in an armchair, dog obediently resting on her lap, amid a number of bags assumably filled with trash of unknown origin. Meanwhile her companion, still crowned, seems to be in thrall of the balloons, decorations from a party that is no more, maybe symbolising that partying time for the country is well and truly over.

A trophy, apparently thrown away unceremoniously, adds to the puzzle. Perhaps it’s a statement by the artist that improbable storylines are possible in a soulless country gone completely berserk; a country where it’s conceivable that rich, beautiful girls lose it too.

Trab (Dust)

Trab (Dust) is a cruel definition of the archipelago. We exist amid a dust which never settles down, a din which never dissipates, a mad rush to demolish our heritage of old and pre-existent buildings. We exist in a reality gone hopelessly off kilter in which the three islands, Comino included, are raped and ravaged in an orgy of making hay while the sun is shining.  

Indeed, the sun shines in most of Ciancio’s paintings, beating down mercilessly, bleaching everything in its wake and reducing our country to a lifeless desert. The high-rise building behind the worker stands like a mirage, like a ghost that would not be exorcised. He is well-kitted for his job, wearing mufflers to mitigate the screams of the tool he carries on his shoulder. The caged finch, the lack of freedom, the graffiti, the building site all contribute to the general decadence, to a perverted contemporary vanitas of sorts that encompasses everything. However, Ciancio is still an idealist at heart and hasn’t lost all hope – the white horse is a portent than not all is forever lost, some of the joys of the past can still be retrieved.

L-Istennija (The Awaiting) implies hopeful deliverance from the current state of being to something more fulfilling, the full moon symbolic of completion and the realisation of one’s dreams.  

The pristine Maltese countryside and the blue sea are the backdrop for Resolution, the joie de vivre and exhilaration liberating, as the paper crown and allegiances are burnt to cinders. It is as a yearning for an eventual epiphany, the realisation that a redeeming light does exist at the end of the tunnel. 

In Ciancio’s words, this exhibition is about “people and objects that jostle for attention in settings that may seem bizarre, humorous and tragic all at once”. The artist has indeed captured the zeitgeist of the times in this collection of paintings in which the boundaries between reality and allegory are blurred.

Return Island, open until May 27, is hosted by the Malta Society of Arts, Palazzo de La Salle, Republic Street, Valletta. Entrance is free but subject to COVID-19 restrictions.