The theme for the 2020 APS Mdina Cathedral Contemporary Art Biennale − Regaining a Paradise Lost: The Role of the Arts – presented all those involved with a difficult challenge and a sense of responsibility. It has provoked debate, contemplation and disagreement. Yet such is the purpose of this project.

Toni Pace, Trojan Horse, c. 1964-66

The publication accompanying the exhibition, which was shared online as the physical exhibition was cancelled due to COVID-19, is intended not only to record the event but also to add to its discursive and critical nature. The collection of essays all underline the global necessity of the theme of the 2020 APS Mdina Biennale.

Rosanna Ruscio’s scholarly work centres on the relationship between art and the environment. In her essay, she eloquently opens up the dialogue on the necessity of art and bio-aesthetics in the era of the Anthropocene, also giving an account of the environmental art movements which emerged on the scene in the latter part of the 20th century. Art’s role in establishing solidarity and harmony between people is underlined in Ruscio’s text.

Nicola Arkell Reed, The Busy Bee Has No Time for Sorrow, 2020

Kerstin Borchhardt further enters into eco-critical and eco-speculative theories and how these have been set into practice by contemporary artists, with an emphasis on Bruno Latour’s notions of Gaia.

Some artists from this year’s APS Mdina Biennale, and also from previous editions of the project, feature in her discussion on contemporary art’s response to environmental issues. Borchhardt poses that the aesthetic of expanded ecotopias could lead to a revised relationship between man and our place in the ecosystem.

Activist art and performative gestures form the subject of Diana K. Murphy’s essay. She enquires how activism and performance can act as collective artistic protest within the art institution, arguing that such public historical spaces provide a fertile and meaningful platform for such activity.

Victor Agius, Sublime Landscapes, 2020

Gabriel Zammit’s philosophical essay centres on aesthetics, resistance and art’s response to terror and tragedy. This debate is a difficult one which is immersed in many philosophical and theoreticalarguments.

Concluding with Theodor Adorno’s statement on rationality’s imperviousness to suffering, Zammit infers that it is the non-rational which encapsulates the memory of humanity’s collective experience.

The final essay returns to the Maltese Arvid Pardo’s radical concept of the ‘common heritage of mankind’ and the international law debate on the environment. Humankind’s attitude towards nature as existing beyond the human is here tackled through the lens of legal concepts and norms, and how these have shaped human rights. Moving beyond art in its scope, the essay places the APS Mdina Biennale within the lineage of Pardo’s concept and elicits Malta’s central role in this global legal debate.

Christine Spatt, Smoke and Mirrors, 2019

Further to the aforementioned essays, there is an introduction to Unearthing Metal: A Distance of Time, an exhibition of metal sculptures by Toni Pace curated by Hannah Dowling.

Continuing with the APS Mdina Biennale’s tradition of exhibiting the art of Malta’s modern masters alongside the contemporary, this display of Pace’s sculptures is a historic event, bringing together a near-complete selection of the artist’s daring steel works.

Art and the environment is the subject of the new publication.

The final section is the catalogue of artists and artworks being shown in the 2020 APS Mdina Biennale. Each artist has proposed a different perspective on the chosen theme, exploring these through a variety of visual explorations and layered with socio-cultural and philosophical notions.

The publication, edited by Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci and Nikki Petroni, is published by Horizons.

Thomas C. Chung, And Then The Sun Was Gone…., 2019-2020