The exhibition Playful Futures currently showing at Valletta Contemporary brings to focus works by Maltese-French artist Laura Besançon which reflect on our changing landscapes, bidding us to refresh our perspectives and attitudes towards ever-changing contexts beyond our control. Lara Zammit explores with the artist the works’ underlying themes.

Play is hard to define. It features on many planes of human experience taking multifarious stances. Ever dualistic, it can be subversive and impish, or childlike and naïve, all the while ungovernable.

Playful Futures alludes to play’s many faces as it welcomes viewers into the Valletta Contemporary refuge in the capital city. One of its tasks is to play with perspectives about our built environment, using the power of play to turn monsters into mockeries. Another is to play with our ill-feelings towards our urban graves, urging us to sift through our anger and see what remains.

Detail from God Bless! or Knockdown (2021) by Laura Besançon.

Laura Besançon, whose work is the main focus of the exhibition, explains how work on this began as a project titled Alone, Together, which she conducted at London while reading for a master’s degree at the Royal College of Art.

“I lived around housing estates – very high tower blocks – and I decided to send letters to the residents. I asked them to listen to a particular song on a particular night at a particular time and play with their lights in sync with the music so that the structure of the tower block comes to life, like a visual orchestra”, she explained.

“It was a means of injecting play or spontaneity into a city, which is usually very rigid and all about work. That is where my interest in play and playful action began.”

Besançon’s research into the subject of play then took her to Amsterdam to see the work of the Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck who devoted his life to playgrounds.

“If you look at the playgrounds, they look almost like a sculpture with their very minimal aesthetic. The point of these was to stimulate children to project their imagination onto the structure and see what it could represent. The playground didn’t have any literal shapes in it like today, with these plastic playgrounds which tell you that something is a boat or a swing, for example.

Many of Besançon’s works convey this playful but serious subversion

“I was interested in how these minimal sculptures offer a space for play between kids, but I even saw pictures of older adults engaging with these playgrounds, so I began thinking of how adults can also play.”

Besançon went on to say that since play is a space of exploration and imagination, we need this to imagine possible futures.

Alone, Together (2018-) by Laura Besançon.

To add to the exhibition’s aim of exploring these playful futures, the artist invited collaborators, who too explore notions of play through the practice of photography and sculpture, to exhibit their works alongside hers. These are Tom Lovelace (UK), Ignacio Barrios (Spain), Dawoon Kim (South Korea), Tom Medwell (UK) and Gökhan Tanrıöver (Turkey).

“These works are not all photographs,” she said. “They are presented as part of objects, on the floor, on a metal stand. The piece Still, Life is even placed on street sign frames, which I thought is very contemporary in the context of Malta because of all the construction. I showed the same piece in London but in Malta it could mean something else.”

Speaking about the many architectural features present in the works, Besançon said these represent or are a symbol for society since architecture is pervasive in our lives, in turn influencing us with its symbolism and rhythm.

It is curious to imagine how the Maltese may react to the structures in the photographs, considering the encroachment of the urban environment on society and the consequent feeling that there isn’t much room for play in our urban spaces.

In response to this, Besançon posited that by placing photos on street sign frames – which usually say “Diversion” or “No Entry” – she almost wanted to add an element of humour so that if people encounter these outside the exhibition, they may recall this humorous slant instead of feeling annoyed, or it may even make them want to take some sort of playful action against it, like place a photograph there themselves.

Installation shot of Still, Life (2019) by Laura Besançon.

In another artwork, titled God Bless! or Knockdown, Besançon shows the Mġarr church now covered by a block of flats. In this artwork, she stuck a door knocker on the photograph, “which is almost a bit violent, like I want to knock it down”, she said, “but at the same time still innocent because it’s just a photo”. Many of Besançon’s works convey this playful but serious subversion.

Norbert Attard, the director of Valletta Contemporary, described Besançon’s work as a combination of photography and sculpture which bridges the gap between the two. He said that the exhibition is in line with Valletta Contemporary’s ethos, which emphasises the reflective nature of the pieces on display.

“Most galleries do not think about the concept behind a piece since their priority is whether or not a piece will sell. For us, the concept is paramount,” said Attard.

Playful Futures is the first exhibition at Valletta Contemporary since the latest COVID-19 closures. Speaking about the impact of the pandemic on the institution, Attard said that this forced a change in vision for their planned exhibitions, but also gave them time to reassess things from a practical standpoint. What is unchanged, however, is their commitment to support emerging artists.

Playful Futures was curated by Elyse Tonna and is running at the Valletta Contemporary until June 6. Visit www.vallettacontemporary.com for more info.