Malta resident, British artist and tutor Jeni Caruana has provided a number of paintings to international dance performers Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor, who were in Malta to perform their latest piece Two Room Apartment, which made its European debut during the Malta Arts Festival.

The duo were in Malta on the first leg of their global tour, which takes them to New York, Paris and China. Caruana, who is known for her professional interest as a painter in the nude form, captured the Israeli dancers with live paintings which denote the complexity of their performance.

Titled Nudes in Motion, Caruana’s paintings complement the event’s theme by celebrating key moments during the dance performance when the two dancers create intimate moments with the audience. Physically demanding and requiring a lot of energy, the Two Room Apartment dance choreography is characterised by synchronicity and repetition of movement, suggestive and provocative body movements and the dancers’ manipulation and lifting of their collective identity as a couple.

Many of Caruana’s paintings are painted live, such as the artist’s jazz paintings, which, like the paintings for Two Room Apartment, are originals composed in the moment as the event unfolds and not working from photos or sketches. The works are immediate impressions created on the spot, which is what lends them a unique and distinctive character.

A jazz painting exhibition by Jeni Caruana runs until Wednesday at the Hotel Phoenicia, Floriana.

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