War and peace in students’ art

From kites to knives, to the Wall of Berlin and the Statue of Liberty, from dart boards to war weapons, secondary school students tell Kristina Chetcuti how creative art helps them express their thoughts on freedom.

A huge war tank dominates the exhibition room in St Thomas More College Girls’ Junior Lyceum in Żejtun. It is an art piece of course, not a real one.

Only, hang on. This is not exactly your usual battle weapon. Instead of wheels, it has flowers, instead of ammunition it is depicted as firing butterflies. Through creative art, students turned a heavy rambling steel structure of death into a witty, comical and joyful dream.

Freedom was the theme of this year’s Art Links, which for the past 12 years has been the annual showcase for teenage art students and their teachers from private and government secondary schools. This year’s topic aimed to highlight the power of art, which shows the way to hope, change and gradually to freedom.

“The exhibition is all about positive energy, cooperation and exchange of ideas among teachers and students,” Henrietta Mallia, organiser and art teacher at St Thomas More College, said.

“We chose this year’s theme before anyone had an inkling about the revolutions in North Africa. By the time the students were working on the projects, the unrest all over the Arab world had turned into a major hurricane,” she added.

This turned out to be an advantage as the students had the opportunity to use contemporary history and media as a point of reference for their expressions.

Student Kimberly Pace, 14, said she followed the war in Libya throughout the time she was working on the art project.

“It has made me and my peers more aware of what is happening around us. Mostly though, it made me appreciate the fact I live in Malta.”

Students from the 10 secondary schools taking part all spoke enthusiastically about the process of generating an art installation. For them it was not just a matter of putting brush to paper.

“We had to research, investigate and experiment before we could actually realise what we had in mind,” Jeffrey Okpara, 11, from Sta Venera Boy’s Secondary School, said.

His classmate Zack Esmeal, 11, explained how during their art lessons 14 of them acted out, filmed and edited a DVD which dealt with the topic of war, and was part of their installation.

“We made use of the school’s equipment and resources to try and depict what we were following on the news all the time,” he said, adding that his father’s family lives in Libya so the events were close to home.

The students were encouraged to discuss the pros and cons of wars, revolutions and the freedom of movement. However, they were also urged to explore artistic styles varying from cubism, surrealism, futurism, pop art, and local artists to help them express their creativity.

“At the end of the day, art is knowing what is happening around you. In your artistic expression you need to pass on a message about a current social issue,” Ms Mallia said.

Not all students interpreted freedom as something necessarily related to war. Some explored the emotional issues that lack of freedom can bring with it such as monotony, confusion, routine, anger, frustration and aggression.

For Inez Baldacchino, 14, freedom symbolises a human emotion, and together with her classmates, she expressed this with blotches of paint splattered over a screen.

“Sometimes we have too many things on our mind, everything is closed up. We need to let go – that is freedom,” she said.

Others put up a dartboard-like installation. “That represents school – we thought that because of all the rules and strict discipline, school can at times feel like a prison cell and restricts our freedom,” Rachel Mangion, 14, said. Others got into their project so much that they were even willing to forgo their breaks and opted to stay after school hours.

“We ended up discussing everything from happiness to human trafficking to American artists such as Morris Lewis,” Sean Micallef Trigona, 15, from St Edwards College, said.

“The more we worked on our exhibit, the more we realised we are really lucky with our lives: we should be thankful, for we get a real lot out of it,” he said.