Project Category: Art

Sydney

March 11, 2012 | 

Carmen

November 23, 2011 | 

Carmen Consoli is an Italian singer-songwriter from Catania whom I have learnt to love across the years since 1999 when I first listened to her music during a Festivalbar show. This is that very particular moment when I literally fell in love with this completely amazing artist who has, since then, blossomed into one of the most respected names in the Italian and international music panorama. Her music is mostly personal but she frequently looks into socio-political themes through her provocative, ironic or sarcastic approach. Through the years Consoli was able to develop her art by researching and working within various musical languages.

I had the chance to attend two of her live concerts in Taormina (2010) and Acireale (2015).

This portrait is an effort to interpret the beauty of this heart-warming artist who has blessed me with her art all across the best years of my life.

VIGO

November 22, 2011 | 

Kaxxa

November 2, 2011 | 

Lady1952

September 21, 2011 | 

Pawlu’s Lady1952 (2011) is a haunting digital collage that inhabits the same emotional terrain as Explosions In The Sky’s “Postcard From 1952,” balancing nostalgia with rupture. At its centre stands a spectral and fragmented female figure, whose presence anchors the work in a liminal space between memory and myth. She becomes less a portrait than a vessel for cultural residue, her obscured gaze resisting the easy consumption often imposed on mid‑century femininity.

Behind her, the unmistakable silhouettes of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon emerge, recontextualised within a digital, postmodern frame. This citation is not decorative; it interrogates the historical gaze that once rendered women as angular, exoticised subjects of male desire. By embedding these figures into a collage of temporal dissonance, Pawlu transforms them from muses into witnesses, participants in a broader critique of how female identity is constructed, fragmented, and reclaimed.

The expansive 80 × 140 cm format amplifies the cinematic sweep of the composition, echoing the song’s slow emotional crescendo. Rather than romanticising the past, Lady1952 exposes its fractures. Through beauty, distortion, and deliberate homage, the work becomes a quiet act of resistance and an elegy for the silenced and a reanimation of the feminine as complex, unresolved, and enduring.

A meditation on memory, femininity and fractured histories, Lady1952 reimagines mid century womanhood through digital collage, weaving personal nostalgia with art historical critique to reveal the tensions beneath an era’s idealised gaze.

Rinaxximent (Renaissance)

May 31, 2011 | 

Inspired by Earth Garden’s ‘Water’ theme the life-giving element was reinterpreted into a philosophy of life. The struggle for the discovery of the true self, the change/experience/growth and the transition into a dance are the three phases represented by the female figure.

The Gut: a multimedia tribute to Strada Stretta’s golden era

May 13, 2011 | 

The Splendid lounge bar and guest house in Valletta was transformed into an art exhibition space in 2011 as part of the Strada Stretta revival exhibition. The event brought together 15 artists, designers and photographers in a collaborative effort to create a cultural incubator in Valletta, a UNESCO World Heritage City. The Strada Stretta exhibition formed part of a European project funded through the MED Territorial Cooperation Programme and organised by Fondazzjoni Temi Zammit (FTZ), a regional development agency at the University of Malta.

The exhibition was held at the Splendid, a venue whose evocative atmosphere provided an ideal setting for showcasing the remnants of its former glory. The space was filled with vintage furniture, torn upholstery, nostalgic trinkets, decaying toys, a deteriorating staircase and neglected clothing, all seemingly awaiting revival. As visitors moved through the rooms, they were transported to a bygone era, where the ghosts of the past appeared to whisper stories of another time.

The Gut, a multimedia performance presented at the Strada Stretta bar, featured an interactive video installation by Danjeli Schembri, Julian Mallia and Pawlu Mizzi. Visitors were invited to sit at an old Max Neumeyer piano, supplied by Pawlu Mizzi through a donation by the MSSP, and “play the notes of the Splendid”, following a handwritten invitation suspended from a light bulb in the centre of the room. Each unique combination of piano keys triggered a digital animated projection of a character from a bygone era, appearing within a surreal visual composition.

The piano became a kind of dream machine, bringing to life the characters and personalities that had once given Strada Stretta its distinctive identity. The installation offered visitors an immersive glimpse into the lifestyle of the Gut, while its striking combination of imagery, typography and presentation quickly made it a favourite among visitors. As the project developed, it acquired an increasingly surreal quality that reflected the chaotic, cheerful and lively character for which Strada Stretta had once been known. Danjeli’s musical collage, Mallia’s deliberately disproportionate illustrated characters and Mizzi’s typographic compositions extending across the walls all contributed to this atmosphere.

The Splendid project attracted considerable public attention, with hundreds of visitors exploring its nostalgic rooms on the opening night alone. The event was widely regarded as a success, and the Splendid quickly established itself as one of Valletta’s sought-after cultural venues.

Despite this success, however, the hoped-for revival of Strada Stretta and its return to its former splendour never materialised. In the years that followed, the street was taken over by a contemporary catering and entertainment enterprise, a transformation that left much to be desired when compared with the cultural ambitions of the original revival project.

Media References
  1. Lisa Gwen – Coming Strait from the gut – The Times of Malta. April 28, 2011
  2. Rosianne Cutajar – Strada Stretta tiehu l-hajja mill-gdid… – ONE TV. April 17, 2011
  3. Pamela Hansen – Strada Stretta