Giulia Privitelli catches up with artist TONIO MALLIA about his upcoming exhibition, Bellum in Mundum.

“We, this people, on a small and lonely planet,

Travelling through casual space

Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns

To a destination where all signs tell us

 It is possible and imperative that we learn

A brave and startling truth...”

It was Maya Angelou’s enduring words which kept me company, left as I was with my thoughts, my indecipherable scribbles and four empty cups of coffee, mine and Tonio’s, after one of our long morning chats about his new series of paintings, currently exhibited at MUŻA in Valletta, in a show called Bellum in Mundum (‘war on the world’).

TM: “‘It is possible and imperative that we learn a brave and startling truth.’ But this is our most tragic problem that humankind is programmed not to learn. There is, I believe, a self-destructive element innate in us, like some kind of defensive mechanism that nature can trigger when things go out of control ...man just cannot learn indefinitely from its mistakes. Only a machine can learn, devised by man’s very own intellect and learning. And what else can these machines do apart from responding to the noble intention of aiding mankind: control. We become dependent on them, we lose ourselves to them, our nature, or freedom, our ability to learn.

GP: Would you say it’s an inability to learn or forgetfulness? I think it was Derrida who spoke of forgetfulness, or rather the necessity to remember as some kind of religious imperative, at least for the people of Israel.

Children of the Woods

TM: It is imperative that we learn, but perhaps forgetfulness is symptomatic of our inability to do so. It is, I think, an experience or condition which defines the plight of mankind, ultimately from itself. How else can I put it? It’s like suddenly waking up and realising that we not only have caused our own demise, but also that we are unable to overcome it.

You know, I find much inspiration in stories from mythological and Biblical stories, as is the case in this exhibition. There are repeated and constant retellings of essentially the same behavioural patterns, a cyclical condition that awaits some kind of miraculous liberation; a plight which is so powerfully captured in that sudden realisation we read in one of St Paul’s letters: “What a wretched man I am! ... Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?”

GP: That is the cry of a man in despair. The inability to truly choose freely is the stuff of despair, as is with the condition of forgetfulness. Somehow, all of this is to experience that relentless tug of some ‘mysterious power’ towards despair, and the inability of the creative order to save itself, to release itself from its destructive hold. It’s curious, my first interaction with your work was actually through the exhibition WW (‘World War’), around 10 years ago at Spazju Kreattiv. Are you generally drawn to subjects that entail some form of loss, depravity, or human affliction? 

Day of the Locust

TM: Mankind waging war on itself manifests itself in various ways: outright war, but also indirectly, with more sober displays of power. Yet, every action that undermines its own existence, its life source, reveals its own self-sabotage. You know, all great exhibitions – think of Anselm Kiefer’s for example – often carry a particular theme, a single one even. I remember the late Emanuel Fiorentino telling me two things actually, when preparing for an exhibition. The first was to keep in mind the layout, to give each work the space it needs and deserves. And the second was, to have a consistent and continuous statement, a connective thread running through the different works.

GP: That’s what makes them memorable, I suppose. So, the connective thread in this exhibition is woven around man’s inability to learn?

TM: To an extent, yes. There are some clear references to the mythological story of Icarus and his inability to take in his father’s warnings (mind you, his father was an inventor, a scientist you might say!); the biblical flood sent to cleanse a corrupt race; the locusts which plagued the Pharaoh’s people as we read in Old Testament – one of the many consequences of his inability to listen, and therefore learn; the exodus itself, with its many references to the mass migrations happening nowadays too; references to Chernobyl and other tragic instances which, with a little bit of foresight, could have been – and could still be – prevented.

What is under attack is also beauty, and all the reasons that make life worthwhile and the world a pleasure to live in- Tonio Mallia

But it’s not just about the inability to learn. We are aware of this limitation. My paintings are also about the consequences of our unwillingness to learn. I’m not saying this is what will happen in some pseudo-prophetic way, but it’s more an attempt to highlight the consequences of that ignorance, that inability to really act, to wake up, to be angered and moved by it all. Because ultimately, what is under attack is also beauty, and all the reasons which make life worthwhile and the world a pleasure to live in.

Endless Journey

GP: The title of the exhibition is intentionally misleading for those who are not familiar with Latin: there is a ‘false friend’ in the title. Bellum might be mistaken for the Italian bello. But the two words are significantly different: bellum (or bello in Latin) means war not beauty. How do you reconcile your understanding of beauty and harmony with ugliness and disorder, with this sense of the tragic?

TM: I think it helps to consider how we – mankind – have arrived to a certain understanding of the world, and the more we lean into deep knowledge, like into deep space, the more mysterious it becomes. Just a few days ago, the incredible James Webb images were released to the public, and they literally opened up a whole new cosmos. The implications of such findings are overwhelming.

Now, it is such findings, like all scientific exploration that came before and also the sharpening of philosophical and theological reasoning, that stands as a paradoxical counterpoint to all the ugliness and disorder we are barraged with constantly, even in our own miniscule dot of an island: the construction rampage, the disappearances of our open spaces, toxins in the air; everything has become a competition, we treat each other like a threat, and people are left out at sea.

Folly of Man

GP: It is sad to think that our mark on the world could be the mark of war and violence, of destruction rather than of creation and beauty. If we had to look into it a bit more deeply, it is even more disturbingly inhumane than we think. To destroy is so unnatural and goes against our namesake: Man (or ‘bniedem’: ibn adam), the quintessential ‘son’ who was created; ‘son’ (ibn - iben - ibni) which literally also means ‘to build’, destroys what he/she builds. This is, however, a contradiction not a paradox. There is also a contradiction in how you ‘build’ your own artworks, destruction, defacing, and erasure being key features of your process...

TM: That is a nice way to put it. Yes, it is a mix between control and some element of chance actually. I am a meticulous planner. It often starts with an image that comes to mind, and I try to capture this digitally first, through a kind of collage, made up of several photographs which I would have taken or sourced through books or online searches. It’s a kind of digital manipulation, I suppose. But then, in the act of transposing this image to the painting surface – which I often prepare from scratch using rice paper – so much happens in between.

Accidents happen from which the images emerge. For things to look natural, there has to be room for error, it is part of life, of being and coming into being. Then I build my way up into darkness, but towards the end, I also tend to wash out certain areas of the painting in a process of removal, and add highlights and other more precious pigments and materials were needed.

There is this transformation then, from the planned origin to that unexpected outcome, enabled only through the freedom we, as artists, momentarily enjoy as we create. And that’s another thing, the importance of enjoyment! The actual process of creating, of expressing an idea, the brief feeling of fulfilment, is the joy of creation: the joy that what we produce is good.

Harbinger

GP: In spite of all the sobriety and darkness, there is then, an element of playfulness and – dare I say – hope? I’ve often referred to your new series of work as a vision projected into the future which, however, is distilled from your own meditations and discernment of the current state of the environment and the world we inhabit. They are visions which emerge of the loss you fear so much. In WW it was the loss of human life felt especially by those left behind. What about here? Are you haunted by the thought of the torment of nostalgia and the impossibility of returning to that state of child-like dependency on nature, which we seem to want to outgrow so aggressively? 

TM: The child, our children, are everything. They are the ‘last’ who must come first. They are witnesses to all that is being sacrificed, and yet still have that ability to dream, to look up to the skies in awe. We have a lot to learn from that, from their ability to dream, which time also seems to wither away. The child, so, symbolises that loss but also, simultaneously, represents hope: they emerge from the woods, from the darkness or look at the light, at the comet descending or crossing the dark skies, the mystery that deepens knowledge and, perhaps, certainly for people like me, our hope.

***

But words are ultimately a refuge. Before the great void of not knowing, of silence, of startling truths discovered from one unexpected moment to the other, words do indeed become a refuge. For Tonio, perhaps, it is in and through his art, his paintings, that he may come to face the world bravely, to reconcile its creative beauty with the destruction too often and tragically inflicted upon it, to accept the proximity of bello (beauty) to bellum (war), if the first is to heal the last, and the last to learn from the first.

Bellum in Mundum, curated by Giulia Privitelli, is open until September 11 at MUŻA, Valletta. Free admission. Opening hours are Monday to Sunday, 10am to 4.30pm.