Il-Ħaġar museum in Victoria is the venue of Unknown Prescription, an exhibition of works by Mario Abela, Charles Balzan and Justin Falzon. Curated by Austin Camilleri, the exhibition explores ideas of transition, fragmentation and the flesh, where paintings and photography dialogue with artefacts from the museum’s permanent collection.

Last Saturday, one of the artists, Charles Balzan, led a walk-through of the exhibition which is in its final week.

Balzan is a conceptual artist whose mediums run the gamut of installation, photography, etching, painting and drawing. His work reveals his interests in philosophy, theology and poetry: actually a visceral exploration of the unconscious and the primitive urges within us. Primal emotions like rage, terror or trauma are conveyed through bodily postures whose vulnerability is synonymous with pain and with an insatiable craving for connection, solace and liberation.

Balzan has participated in various exhibitions, locally and abroad, building on his background in graphic design and history of art. His latest endeavour of blackening stones with soot and then printing onto them is reminiscent of destruction and loss but also of creativity and meaning.

The breaking up of bodies into fragments placed strategically around the museum “in dialogue with” items in the permanent collection invites the visitor to ponder the continuum between life and afterlife ‒ with death acting as the fulcrum.

Il-Ħaġar is open between 9am and 5pm, seven days a week. Entrance is free.