As the song would have it, “love is a many splendoured thing”. But, also, in Louis de Bernieres’s words, “when you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then it subsides”.

It is loves like the latter that fuelled an exhibition by four young artists, titled Inħobbok (I love you). The exhibition consisted of a series of autobiographical artworks set up at Spazju Kreattiv, St James Cavalier, Valletta.

Umberto Buttigieg, You Are the Ghost Hunting My Memories.Umberto Buttigieg, You Are the Ghost Hunting My Memories.

The protagonists of this exhibition were the art collective consisting of Maria Theuma, Luke Azzopardi, Umberto Buttigieg and Cypriot artist Demetra Kallitsi – and, unknowingly, their ex-boyfriends and girlfriends.

The exhibits were as varied as the relationships each artist has pursued. The manner in which the tales were told was witty and laden with raw emotion that, at times, bordered on the obsessive. Moreover, the show was curated in such a way that each work left a lot of room for reflection, which, as you wander from one room to the next, made you feel like you were invading someone else’s privacy through their most personal, inner thoughts.

The first room contained Umberto Buttigieg’s exhibits. Silly Lovers was a crude way of immortalising a failed love. Consisting of engraved black granite, this very much resembled a funerary slab with a text message is emblazoned on it. The granite slab linked the end of the relationship to mourning. Buttigieg’s other exhibit consisted of a collage with seven manipulated images, titled You Are the Ghost Haunting My Memories, with texts and love phrases. The space was purposely left to be stark and very clinical.

The second room housed Demetra Kallitsi artworks. Kallitsi held a live performance called The Lover’s Fatal Identity is Precisely This: I am the One Who Waits on the exhibition’s opening night, relevantly chosen to be February 14, Valentine’s Day.

Demetra Kallitsi, Stories of How I Managed.Demetra Kallitsi, Stories of How I Managed.

These young multidisciplinary artists have bravely and creatively expressed their innermost emotions for everyone to see in this collaborative effort

The performance, that lasted for 30 minutes, consisted of Kallitsi reciting passages in three parts of Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse. With each passage she wiped herself with a sponge soaked in rose water, red wine and honey. This was recorded and was subsequently projected onto one of the walls. In this instance, Barthes’ figure of the lover becomes the female, the one left behind and waiting for the beloved object’s return.

Kallitsi also showed Stories of how I managed to f*** everything up, a work consisting of 26 framed phrases. The text is personal, uncensored, angry, while the medium with which these phrases are presented is that of embroidery on fabric, even reutilised fabrics, again playing on the feminine craft that feminists in the 1970s termed femmage.

Luke Azzopardi, Ma Nafx Inħobbokx.Luke Azzopardi, Ma Nafx Inħobbokx.

Maria Theuma presented what was a very intimate exposé in a bright pink atmosphere. In Baby, Are You Happy Now? the viewer could listen to Theuma reciting her personal diary written when a love was lost, and she was still infatuated by the source of her sorrow. One could listen to her audio while sitting in what was created to mimic a confessional of sorts, completely lined in white fur. Her language so eloquently brought across her message of the love lost, and the despair she once felt.

The same theme encapsulated her Il-Ġeometrija t’Idejk, where nine captions corresponding to nine showcased objects in a cabinet that each related to the nine weeks of a relationship with relative, striking texts in Maltese. Each object became a museum piece: captioned and aptly displayed.

The bubblegum, Barbie pink light infusing the space was particularly distinctive, and completely unrelated to the profound subject-matter at hand. Theuma presented herself as a very able author whose words aptly reflect and evoke her state of mind.

The final room presented Luke Azzopardi’s two exhibits, on which he collaborated with a composer, a soprano and a photographer. Ma Nafx Inħobbokx consisted of a showcase containing a jacket to which several elements are attached, including taxidermied birds, and beneath which are broken cactii, moths, and such. This exhibit was based on the idea of presenting craftiness as a natural history museum relic.

The other work – I’ve Made Up My Mind – was a series of photographs manipulated by clay and acrylic paint with brief phrases resembling journal entries.

These young multidisciplinary artists have bravely and creatively expressed their innermost emotions for everyone to see in this collaborative effort. They did so while being daring, but utilising a tasteful display to showcase their heartbreak. They wore their hearts upon their sleeves to put it in the words of none other than William Shakespeare, as delivered by Iago in Othello.

While this was not an exhibition of traditional art forms, it was one that was conceptual, where the emotional quality took centre stage.

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