Life-changing is an expression used for episodes of seminal importance in our personal biography. DARREN TANTI talks to Joseph Agius about the central theme of his current exhibition Aħmar Ħelu w’Qares.

JA: Orhan Pamuk, in his novel My Name is Red, claims: “Before my birth there was infinite time, and after my death, inexhaustible time. I never thought of it before: I’d been living luminously bet­ween two eternities of darkness.” Did your daughter’s birth and your grandfather’s death, with your life happening meanwhile, make you realise this? Are we all living in a bubble that threatens to burst at any moment?

DT: Once during a visit to the obstetrician, the doctor gave me a deep insight about life; he told me: “We (as people) became so alien to life and death; we removed birth and death from our homes and took them to hospital. In the past, these events happened at home and people from early childhood learnt how to deal with them. Now we live in fear of these events.”

Darren TantiDarren Tanti

I was deeply struck by the truth of this statement; he put in words an uneasiness I had been feeling for quite a while. Even though as humans we are aware of the unavoidability of the circle of life, we tend to detach ourselves from it, or rather look at it from afar. We do this for valid reasons, as thinking too much about the unavoidable would not allow for the life ‘in bet­ween’ to happen. In my case, I was always sensitive to the ‘bubble’ of life, especially due to art; as art is a constant memento mori – it is the manifestation of life in the form of an artwork that continues after the passing away of its creator.

But what was earth-shattering for me was the two events of life and death unfolding concurrently – to experience the paradox on yourself and your loved ones – being a participant and a spectator of events beyond your control. 

JA: Is this exhibition a watershed, a reckoning of what life’s all about – a red that alternates bet­ween the sweet and sour, just as the title of the exhibition suggests and just like a red wine might do?

DT: The exhibition is the pictorial and visual representation of watershed moments experienced in real life. The artworks presented are inspired by the processes leading to birth and passing away, but in themselves they are only reflections as the true meaning and experience reside in me. The red alternates from sweet to sour (I feel that in Maltese the experience is represented in the expression ħelu w’qares, whereas in English I describe it as bittersweet), because it metaphorically represents the two extremities of life – the sweetness of a newborn child and the sadness of a fading life. The exhibition is the result of my need to stop the madness of the daily rush and consciously metabolise what happened in the past months.

When living through such events, time seems to behave strangely, it slows down and speeds up at the same time – once I was involved in a small car accident in which I was sitting in the back seat of the car; I remember that at the moment of impact, which happened in an instant, everything slowed down, so much so that I saw the shards of glass flying by me in slow motion; my life situation could be compared to an emotional crash – thus I created these artworks so that I spend time with myself and let events sink in.

FlagellationFlagellation

When drinking wine, the connoisseur, takes his/her time to taste it, he/she does not gulp it down, but lets the taste reveal itself, to reveal its complexity, boldness/sweetness. Time allows for gustatory celebration of wine, and so it does to reflections about life.

During the time I spent creating the artworks, I relived childhood memories and beautiful moments I shared with my grandfather and family, I was able to celebrate the love we have for each other – sadness became sweetness. I spent reflecting about my new identity and role as a father to our bundle of joy – Scarlett – I had time to relive her smiles and milestones which, even though they happened only few months ago, feel as if they are already a lifetime away. Redness encapsulates all of the above.   

During the time I spent creating the artworks, I relived childhood memories and beautiful moments I shared with my grandfather and family

JA: Red is the colour of love and the heart, blood, setting sun, fire. The colour permeates all the exhibition’s paintings. Does it symbolise a common denominator, a state of mind? What is the basic reason for choosing the colour?

DT: The name of my daughter is Scarlett; thus the colour for this exhibition was predetermined as soon as she was born. It is not coincidental that she was named so – red is the most complex of all colours as it embodies paradox – humanity and divinity.

TwelidTwelid

Red is the colour of love, the heart, setting sun, fire – I would also add, blood, danger, violence and anger. Red has gravitas. It demands respect and, as an artist, one needs to be aware of it. In the case of my project, red symbolises my daughter as well all the connotations the colour brings with it. It permeates the interpretations of the academic artworks (the subject matter represented on each canvas) that represent the memories of my grandfather who loved art of the specific genre, the same way my daughter permeates my life and gives new meaning to my relationship with my grandfather.

JA: Your references to Roland Barthes’ dualities of punctum and studium, the latter might be seen as a predisposition to experience and a grasping and ration­al­ising of knowledge, the former as a puncturing of the soul through perceptive promptings that elicit a range of emotions. I find analogies of this with Proust’s episode of the madeleine cupcake. Can anything, even the most seemingly banal of things, provoke this upheaval, in the memory centres of our brains? Or is it a re-balancing?

DT: I find that Roland Barthes’ attempt to understand the power of photography transcends into other facets of life. It is true that he spoke about the punctum in the context of photography, but the ‘prickle’ can occur in any instant with any object in life. Perhaps Barthes’ reflection pointed out an experience that we are only at the beginning of understanding by development in the field of cognitive sciences. The fact is that (a good part of) our sense of identity is built upon a collection of past experiences we call memories (which we may be consciously aware of, or else not – hidden perhaps even repressed within the subconscious level), and when something unexpectedly resonates with these memories, especially if the memo­ry itself carries an emotional baggage of deep personal meaning, it may sting us and surprise us.

TghanniqaTghanniqa

This explains why the punctum is personal and cannot be staged.

Visuals (in the case of Barthes – photography, I would also like to include paintings), can easily surprise us – a case in point is the experience of going through an old album or leafing through an artbook – the first impact that happens between our sight and the image goes directly to our core and may stir us before our rational thinking kicks in. This sensation can be extended to any other sense – smell, taste, sound – but I do not want to stretch this theory too far without having really gone in specific studies about it.

In the case of this body of work, the ‘prickle’ selected the historical artwork that I reinterpreted. My original intention was to see how artists in the past dealt with events of life and death through their art, but as soon as I began searching, I was struck by specific artworks that I could later realise had an emotional attachment to them – as they remind me of art I used to follow in my childhood. Therefore, in my personal journey, the experience of punctum was evoked by a depiction of a ribcage or of a head in the background within a painting.

It-Tlieta FilghoduIt-Tlieta Filghodu

JA: Why do we ache so much for the past?

DT: As I argued before, an integral part of the self lies within memories. It is true that when we refer to memories, we might feel nostalgic and feel dissatisfied by the present, but we do not have to feel disappointment. The fact is that we look at the past with the false illusion given by our ‘sovereign eye’; our memories are built according to our point of view and are moulded in such a way that fit our purpose – whether it is emotional and/or rational. In truth, the stability of that memory is at fault because it embodies only particular facets of the past reality – it may be that the nostalgia and episodes one longs for are omitting pain and focusing only on the positive.

Perhaps we ache, not so much for the past, but for our ideal construct of the past. I ache for the memories of joy and pain (that can be remodelled into a posi­tive experience – as in the anxiety before birth can be remodelled into expectation) but I do not evoke moments of boredom and powerlessness. 

JA: Is there a chromatic, semiotic, antidote to all this redness?

DT: Why should there be one? The chromatic antidote to red is green – when mixed, they neutralise each other by creating a muddy grey – it is a muted colour. In pictorial terms, this muted greyish colour is more interesting than the metallic cold grey produced by black and white paints. But why should I mute this redness, when it can sing songs of joy and happiness and elicit the sublime at one go?

Aħmar Ħelu w’Qares is showing at Il-Kamra ta’ Fuq in Mqabba until December 12. For updated opening hours, visit the gallery’s Facebook page.

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