“Beauty is the moment when time vanishes. Beauty is the space where eternity arises.” ‒ Amit Ray

Island life has its limitations; existing on a miniscule island, overpopulated, overdeveloped and over the top in more ways than one, is infinitely suffocating.

This closing-in invites the most outrageous displays of emotions; from vicious outbursts of road rage to festa petards that seem to be getting progressively louder each feast that passes; from incongruous high-rises to the proud ownership of supercars as status symbols of virility in a country overwhelmed by gridlocks and traffic jams.

This melting pot of mayhem and noise is, quite relatively, a recent phenomenon in a country which, up to 20 years ago, was considered to be a gem of a Mediterranean island, surrounded by postcard-perfect blue seas and cloudless skies.

It was a country rich in myths and folklore, in history and legacy. Something suddenly shifted and we lost all sense of perspective: everything got louder, taste went south, everyone desired to be heard amid an ever-increasing cacophony.

This country is breathless in many ways, heaving heavily to live, its beauty tarnished forever. The mushrooming ‘modern’ architecture occupies land and air, like hell reaching up for the heavens, a sad imitation of a way of a life that isn’t ours. This accentuates the despair and the despondency, as everything seems so far gone and hopeless.

Everything seems cheap and not genuine. We have become a country in which simulacra are regarded as the real deal, where a phallic monstrosity becomes a defining feature of our landscape, to be gawked at.

Two artists, Galina Troizky and Henry Alamango, are sensitive to these incongruencies, these sore thumbs. The reference to this degradation is in the title of the exhibition itself, Time, Space …. and Palmyra.

The ancient Syrian city of Palmyra had steadfastly withstood the ravages of time for centuries but succumbed to the callous designs of IS, who tried to wipe out this timeless monument in 2015. It was an act against one of the icons of ancient civilisations, an attempt at erasing historical legacy to satisfy the cultural bloodthirst of the leadership of the terrorist group.

Troizky and Alamango transpose this lamented loss to Malta’s everyday contemporary existence. Cultural landmarks, heralding the country’s colourful history, are severely compromised or demolished by developers; to be replaced by dismal, concrete blemishes, thus creating a desolate hinterland of urban anonymity. Indeed, a ‘Palmyra’ that has consciously been allowed to be destroyed through the agency of cranes and jackhammers, instead of bombs and other nefarious means.  However, this degradation goes beyond just these considerations.

“There is a general tendency to interpret environmental/urban degradation in visual or aesthetic terms, which is the first impact, and easily understood,” Alamango remarks. “Of equal importance, and probably more so, is the impact on social well-being and identity if urban and spatial development do not factor in community development and characteristics.”

Alamango’s clutch at what’s still left

Alamango’s watercolours hint at a suspended time, wherein the beauty of our country still persists; one which although at the mercy of the needs of tourism still perseveres; the destruction has not at yet overwhelmed some of the spaces in Valletta.

Residents still hang their wash to dry on the balconies and tourists still get to enjoy the pace of life in our capital city, morsels of our country’s past.

Villeġjatura, Għadira refers to that post-World War II penchant to own a property that would be a holiday home during the summer months. The etymology of the word Villeġjatura has its origins in ‘villaġġ’ or village, a quest for a break from the more hectic life in the towns – a quiet, laid-back existence of sun, sea and fun.

However, many shanty villages of so-called boathouses have mushroomed around our beaches in the last decades, maybe as an attempt to emulate the villeġjatura of the olden days. This could be Alamango’s sarcastic remark on this irregular phenomenon that transcends the powers of the relevant authorities.

The Last Neighbours and The Last Nail could be regarded as the point of dialogue and interaction with Troizky’s world. In the former work, there is the discomfort of old meeting the new, the genuine meeting the artifice, the parody of it all and the unbearable juxtaposition. The neighbours aren’t just the conventional next-door ones; voyeurs from the shining high-rises are at a vantage point; the privacy enjoyed by the members of the old neighbourhood has been reduced to a sham while the sea view has been practically obliterated.

This country is breathless in many ways, heaving heavily to catch its breath, its beauty tarnished forever

“As an artist, I now find that therapeutic scenes are becoming harder to locate and capture artistically,” Alamango points out.

“By inference, therefore, the therapeutic effect of our natural environment is in sharp decline  and our general state of mind is that much poorer as a result.”

The Last Nail, the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back, is about the last indecency in the coffin of the once-picturesque Xlendi Bay in Gozo. The incongruency of the development jars against the backdrop of the ancient cliffs and the vernacular remnant of the old hamlet; we have grown to be complacent and impotent in the face of the continuous defacement of the beauty of our islands.

“Does economic growth necessarily lead to equitable development, in its widest sense?” Alamango queries. “Does increased wealth necessarily result in the very quality of life that it is intended to deliver?” It is not very difficult to answer these questions.

He also raises another valid point about the relentless loss of community the country is currently experiencing.

“In a practical down-to-earth way, I sometimes muse that it’s ok to be an atheist, but if you cannot spot the church in your town anymore, then you’re likely on the way to losing your identity,” Alamango says.

Troizky’s detached observations of what’s left

Troizky’s observations are more scathing and irreverent, evoking the work of the New Leipzig School artists Arno Rink and Neo Rauch, particularly in composition.

Using a high vantage point in her use of perspective and a detachment probably due to her non-Maltese roots, her paintings exhibit also a disconcerting Wayne Thiebaud unreality in which the real and the improbable integrate into something in-between.

One encounters a similar sense of disorientation when one returns to one’s country of origin. It is not easy to recalibrate the murmurs of memory to factor in the new surroundings. Endless Buildings evokes the vistas from relatively high altitudes, an incongruous mass of an organism that has metastasised into a formless growth. In Escape Routes, the Russian artist integrates the composition’s different ingredients into a hybrid of the natural, the historical and the irreconcilable new.

The left of the painting is the realm a tranquil sea, boat with billowing sails and all, and a flourishing Mediterranean garden; an organic and almost alien conglomeration arises as a new citadel while, to the right, the bastions, one of the strongholds of our culture, acts as a beacon of hope, keeping away the marine turmoil that threatens to overwhelm us, saltpans and all. The malaise, the sickness, is fomented through the degeneration of our traditions, once central to our Mediterranean well-being. Now alien architecture, crystalline like a virus, menaces to contaminate and to throttle everything.

Etched in Stone is a visual tour de force whereby perspectives are intentionally awry in an Escher-esque sort of way. The Swiss artist once claimed: “We adore chaos because we love to produce order.”

Troizky conversely overturns this axiom on its head, separating the Maltese vernacular architecture, the iconography that characterises us, the natural formations and other elements, into separate elements and reconfigures them as a new improbable cauldron of narratives. The looming high-rises are ghostly manifestations on the horizon, foreboding and ready to take over the vacuum, in the aftermath of national collapse and implosion.

Heritage stands out like a puzzle of narratives. In this surreal composition, the web-like salt pans, the grid street pattern of Valletta, historical events, our neolithic temples, the war-time evisceration of our urban fabric, lie under the golden glow of a Mediterranean sun.

These diverse elements, some of which separated by time and space, are integrated as an escutcheon of our heritage. An eviscerated room in the foreground evokes an Antonio López García solemnity in the depiction of an intimate, domestic space that has been summarily violated and exposed. One gets the uncanny feeling that the artist is also commenting about the current literal and metaphorical disembowelment being perpetrated across the board.

“Are we also the perpetrators – or at least the acquiescent accomplices – to an ongoing ‘Palmyra?” the two artists ask in the exhibition’s mission statement. One could ascertain that we are a bit of both and that makes our shortcomings much more diabolical.

Time, Space …. and Palmyra, hosted by the Malta Society of Arts, Republic Street, Valletta, is on until October 1. Visit MSA Facebook page for more information.