In the Catholic Church’s year of faith, the Jesuits in Malta have decided to explore the relationship between faith and art. David Schembri spoke to curator Vince Briffa about art, faith and doubt.
[attach id=244931 size="medium"]A still from Vince Briffa’s video installation, Logos.[/attach]
It was the Thursday before Holy Week. In a week’s time, people of faith would be flocking round the island on the seven visits. But artist and academic Vince Briffa is contemplating the small edits he wants to make to his video installation of a dancer on fire, which would be live in a couple of days.
The annual Lenten pilgrimage and Briffa’s digital cutting floor are inextricably linked. The artist is curating Re-visit – The Contemporary Face of Faith, an artistic project initiated by the Jesuit community in Malta which explores faith through contemporary art. Along with the work of another five artists, and a virtual site at St James Cavalier, Briffa’s video installation is part of a contemporary reimagining of the traditional seven visits.
“We came up with the concept of revisiting faith vis-à-vis contemporary art, and also the fact that for centuries the Church was a patron to the arts whereas now it has been overtaken by other institutions in this regard,” Briffa says of the project.
The result, rather than an affirmation of faith, is more of an exploration of what faith is – and isn’t. “I use religious iconography to question faith, rather than to ascertain it. I wouldn’t say I’m overtly religious,” Briffa says, adding “my religion is my artwork, actually”.
His ‘religion’, so to speak, is far removed from dogma and infallibility, however, so any accusations of delusions of grandeur would be misguided. Doubting, and self-doubting, are at the very heart of his work ethic, and of his conception of what faith is.
“The artistic process consists of the doing and the self-reflexive part, so you’re thinking about what you’re doing, researching, and you’re doing, it’s a cyclic thing and you move forward. There are parallels with faith, because you’re questioning.
“You can’t have faith without doubt, otherwise it’s not faith. It’s the questioning which is the enriching part of faith; it enriches you because you need to move forward in order to grasp something. I don’t think there’s any gain in accepting everything and stopping there, from an intellectual or religious level.”
Despite his emphasis on questioning and doubts, Briffa seems to be more interested in the questions themselves, rather than the answers, putting him at odds with the widespread perception of religion as providing answers to life’s fundamental questions.
“I don’t look for answers in my work; I look for questions, and I approach faith with the same frame of mind. So with questioning, you sometimes feel comfortable; sometimes you don’t feel comfortable.”
And if you do find the answer, he asks, “what will you do with it? I really and truly think there is no one answer to what one will find at the end of the day”.
To this end, he employs traditional religious iconography – fire, smoke, wind, hills – which have been used through various religious traditions – to explore the many facets of faith within religion by using these shared iconographies as a point of departure.
“Take fire, for example. It can be the fire in the burning bush and the self-immolation of Tibetan monks. It can be the fire of the Holy Spirit or the fire that kills. Faith is trying to make out the various truths that are around you,” he says.
Briffa finds that the pageantry and the symbolism associated with Catholicism have a certain poignancy and depth to them. He is less charitable, however, to the Church’s overall approach to art.
Many times, he says, the way the Church uses its visual imagery is “totally wrong in my opinion. If you look at the churches around us, you’ll still find they’re extremely traditional... We need to find a different language, perhaps, visually, to pass the religious message, and that could be a very interesting exercise for art…
“It would help the Church if it were to reassess its visual output. This project is very much a step in that direction. It’s a very bold step for the Jesuits to take. The work is not sacrilegious in the least, but it questions, and it’s in a different aesthetic form from what we’re used to in churches,” he says.
With five out of the seven ‘visits’ being installations, the sense of place and space plays a very important role in immersing the viewer into the artwork.
“Art puts you in a certain frame of mind, especially installation art, where you enter the piece, and that ambience is very conducive to making one feel different. It places the viewer in the work, and site-specific work has this feature.
“The aim is to get people closer to the work, which is religious in some way,” Briffa says. “It’s indirectly people getting people closer to God…”
Indirectly, because although the artworks are physical and immediate, they portray their subject by hinting at it, rather than displaying it outright. Charles ‘City’ Gatt’s installation (at the Jesuit church on Merchants Street), Body and Soul, takes two sets of images – food, that which is consumed by the body, and objects such as books, which represent a higher kind of nourishment. Similarly, Austin Camilleri’s piece, in Tal-Pilar church, is based in a morgue – we see the implements used, but never any bodies.
Pierre Portelli’s installation in St James’ church deals with the Resurrection, while Patrick Fenech plays with light and shadow in the oratory of the Jesuit church. Paintings by Jesuit priest Daniel LeBlond will be exhibited at St James Cavalier, where a digital exhibition and meditation space will also be present.
Part of the challenge in this project was the exhibition spaces themselves – Maltese churches, with their baroque tendencies, are hardly the building equivalent of a blank canvas.
“Rather than only encountering the church, one will encounter the work of the contemporary artist within the framework of the church. This is an interesting, but challenging concept, as churches are already laden with images, information – particularly baroque churches, where you have to compete with the place itself,” Briffa says.
The artworks, therefore, are microcosms of the project itself – pangs of questioning and inarticulacy within an establishment that stretches back centuries.
Re-visit –The Contemporary Face of Faith runs until next Sunday in five locations in Valletta. The project is supported by the Malta Arts Fund.