Despite his young age, Isaac Azzopardi has a presence which is hard to ignore. Knowledgeable and patient with his explanation of things, his attention to detail is very clear and the ideas behind his art concise and full of meaning. Interestingly, his foray into the art world was a gradual process which has now reaped fruit in the form of his first show, ħaġraisland, which he describes as “a collection of reflections about the changing aesthetics of Malta”.

Azzopardi started attending Mcast at the age of 16. However, he abruptly stopped his course after feeling disillusioned.

“My experience at Mcast was truly not as positive as I would have liked it to be and it made me cynical. I was also in a position where I was still trying to find myself: it takes time for one to truly know themselves and I was definitely in the middle of that process. I interned at the Peggy Guggenheim museum in Venice and that gave me a taste of the international scene. When I returned to Malta, I decided to start reading for a Bachelor’s degree in Humanities at the University of Malta and studied art, history, politics and literature. The fact that I could pick and choose what I liked appealed to me.”

His love of not sticking to one fixed path is not something that extends only to his education and, in fact, in ħaġraisland Azzopardi used mixed media to express himself. The theme which ties everything together is the ever-changing landscape of Malta. “Malta as a theme is undervalued and underdeveloped. However, for me it has always been a subject which is both fascinating, as well as frustrating.

“I have found myself thinking of Malta for many years. However, all the work I did before I started working on this exhibition was done as a form of therapy and self-expression. To give an example, Anselm Kiefer sought to express the ‘misfortune of the Holocaust’ by exploring history through the past. He used art as the ultimate vehicle to build meaning through association. A burnt field was made to represent all the potential that had been lost. In Malta, we whitewash a lot of our history.”

So, what inspired his artistic journey? “I myself believe in art as alchemy, the idea of turning lead to gold; the sublimation of dirt to art. You can see this nowhere better than in the work of Austin Camilleri. In his 1999 installation, Stones, Camilleri covered Maltese stone all over the islands in gold leaf. Thus, this commonplace, natural resource was made sacred. There is a rebuttal of traditional Malta at the same time that there is a sublimation of it.

I wanted to move away from the idea of Malta as quaint and idyllic and from my own nostalgia and decided to use concrete

“I wanted to move away from the idea of Malta as quaint and idyllic and from my own nostalgia and decided to use concrete. I have sought to ironise the fact that that is what has become sacred now and that concrete is our new reality. The typical Maltese stone is simply not part of our current aesthetic reality anymore and this idyllic view of things is no longer realistic.”

In his journey to produce the items for his show, Azzopardi often thought about the concept of Malta as a fortress.

“Both tangibly, as well as aesthetically, I couldn’t get away from the idea of Malta as fortress. This physical fortress is mirrored in the way our society operates: there is an idea of insularity and protection, we are protected from the outside but this also means that new things cannot come in. We are defined as much by what is kept out as what is kept in. Our culture and wealth remain in one place and any threat to our religion and culture is refused. A closed city is not only closed off from danger but also from other ideas: a fortress surrounded by nothing but blue skies and blue seas. What is so interesting to me is the fact that despite how nostalgic we are as a country and how adverse we can be to new influences, we have still allowed concrete to take the place of our Maltese stone.”

Further extrapolating on this interesting conflict, Azzopardi wanted to open up the discussion from material to meaning: “It is interesting to me that people would choose cheaper materials simply because they’re easier on the pocket. There seems to be no consideration for the community or for how one’s aesthetic decision will affect a street, a village or a town.

“There seems to be no coherence and little care for our national narrative. The state of our economy may be good but we have sacrificed aesthetics and beauty in the process. We have lost the beauty of architecture and spaces.”

Despite the fact that Azzopardi does not like the new landscape which has taken over Malta, he has found his own way of making peace with it.

“We are trapped in this cycle where fantastic nostalgia and what might have been are leading to a lack of memory. The cycle can never be broken because we just move from one state to the other without acknowledging what our islands have actually become.

“For part of the exhibition, I rubbed a concrete block with coloured pencils in order to turn it into yellow limestone. Through this ritual of familiarisation, I sought to make peace with the object by changing it. I suppose you could call it a purification of the idyllic Maltese narrative that we have. I, too, am whitewashing, but with a totally new vision.”

ħaġraisland shows until March 29 at the Malta Society of Arts, Valletta.

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