“We're all stars, now, in the dope show” – Marilyn Manson

In 1932, Todd Browning’s film Freaks was released, meeting with revulsion as the actors were in fact real-life persons who were suffering from disabilities. They were actually performers in a sideshow circus and the American director attempted to portray a day in the life of these performers. The film was banned for many years as it was regarded as promoting the exploitation of innocent, vulnerable people.

Detail of 'Social Housing' by Etienne Farrell and Mark Mallia.

In the 1960s, the film enjoyed a resurgence of interest and eventually achieved cult status in the 1990s as a masterpiece of the horror film genre. Browning was a master of capturing suspense and intrigue, as he masterfully did in his masterpiece Dracula of 1931. In Freaks, he intended to portray persons with a flawed physical appearance but who were intrinsically good. Some of the ordinary-looking people in the film were portrayed as very cruel, their ‘normality’ and ‘beauty’ masked something seriously flawed – the latter were the actual freaks of the show. It was a comment on perception and how the image of a person incurs one to be deceived into accepting biases as truth.

Etienne Farrell’s and Mark Mallia’s current exhibition, The Dope Show, is a collaborative one as has been their norm for the past few years.

“With a fresh pair of eyes, one can notice the absurdities, the exceptional, the disguised and camouflaged that make up our ‘everyday life’,” they assert in the exhibition’s mission statement. Therefore, it is inferred that one passes through life with one’s eyes blinkered, and that the world out there sings many different tunes that jar with our prejudiced lullabies.

'The Blue Period' by Etienne Farrell

Using the term ‘freak’, in today’s politically correct world, can land one in trouble. It is a labelling term that stigmatises and injures. Yet, TV shows like the British The Office, that was on the airwaves between 2001 and 2003, thrives on bad taste; Ricky Gervais dishes out one-liners that make one itch to laugh, while being dismayed by their crass insensitivity. This hesitation in behaviour could be a sign that one can harbour a mix of emotions deep within. However, one is averse to being regarded as ‘freak’ through the unsavoury attraction of relishing the heartlessness of the verbal exchange.

'The Ringleader' by Mark Mallia

In the exhibition’s mission statement, it is further added: “The boring, aggressive and self-centred fools become more bearable and very often even comic.” Social media and TV have contributed to the ever-increasing incidence of freak shows, especially on TikTok and reality TV. Role models are skewed, and society relentlessly changes for the worse. Double-faced politicians, wearing a whole carnival of masks, run the freakshow, depleting resources and setting the planet on a sorry trajectory.

The artistic duo of Farrell and Mallia has been involved in a number of projects during 2022, investigating various themes ranging from the pandemic to Maltese folk tales. They have been invited to exhibit away from these shores; now they feel that it’s time to let loose, to be unshackled from thematic and stylistic restrictions and run The Dope Show.

'Marilyn' by Mark Mallia

They assert that having met so many different people in the past few months, they coined the idea of putting up a circus, a sort of ‘freak’ show that includes many interesting characters. They say that they have undertook an ethnographic investigation of the facial features of people they came across, or their own subconscious representation of them. This obviously gave free vent to their expression for the reason that myth, monsters and ghouls haunting their own cupboards reconfigured and morphed with real-life individuals, thus creating a carnival of horrors. Unlike Browning, the launchpad wasn’t the actual freak show – for the two Maltese artists, Maltese society provided enough fodder to organise and recreate it as The Dope Show.

Farrell and Mallia cite American photographer Diane Arbus, German New Objectivity artist Otto Dix and even singer Marilyn Manson, (incidentally The Dope Show is the title of his 1998 song) as inspirations for this exhibition. Arbus, much like Browning, was accused of exploiting people with developmental disabilities as subject matter for her work.

'Jelly' by Etienne Farrell

In a review of the Washington Post of the photographer’s recent exhibition in the United States, the reviewer remarked: “Arbus’s cross-dressers and nudists, her people with Down syndrome and Halloween celebrants, no longer look like ‘freaks’. They look like what they are: fellow human beings.” This also captures the spirit of the Browning film, that notwithstanding all, everyone is flawed in one way or other. And that is the spirit behind this Farrell-Mallia experience, a sad affirmation that ‘angels’ and ‘devils’ can easily reverse their roles.

The two artists have been collaborating intensely for the past few years and maybe for the first time in their case, some of the works are signed by both artists, having contributed simultaneously to the particular piece. This is not something conventional as regards the local art scene, but it is rather common away from these shores; an example is that of Gilbert Prousch and George Passmore working together as the collaborative art duo Gilbert & George. One would be hard-pressed to find work that had been created individually in the British duo’s case. However, the two Maltese artists have not as yet fully coalesced into a single artistic entity.

'Henry' by Mark Mallia

The exhibition, currently on at Obelisk Gallery, Main Street, Balzan, is a mixture of paintings, sculptures and reliefs. Garishly coloured works contrast with monochromatic sombre pieces as The Dope Show does not preclude anything in its uninhibited nature.

Performance artist Hayden Grima, known as Delirju, was invited to be part of the inauguration of the exhibition, thus contributing to the burlesque nature of the whole enterprise. Grima is renowned for creating different personas and acting them out, thus staging the Farrell/Mallia concept to a receptive audience.

The Dope Show, hosted by Obelisk Gallery, Main Street Balzan, is on until February 4. For further information, log on to https://www.facebook.com/MalliaFarrell and https://www.instagram.com/delirju/.