Small Bones of Courage, which opened on 7th March, is a collective show that explores the personal experiences of women through the eyes of female artists from Malta, France, Greece, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco and the UK. It’s a wonderful mix of inventive and thought-provoking installations with a 1001 Arabian Nights flavour, teaming the evocative beauty of the storyteller Scheherazade with the challenges of being a woman in today’s world.
The poetic click of an old slide projector greets visitors, as Sandra Zaffarese presents an artist’s book and accompanying projection. She was inspired by Virginia Woolf’s short story in which the narrator notices a mark on the wall causing their thoughts to ‘spiral into an exploration of the mind’s fluid, fragmented recollections’. Woolf’s musings on war, childhood, and more are reflected in Zaffrese’s sequence of phrases, feminist quotes and grainy images, some from her own childhood.
Alongside, Maria Kasaab explores the challenges and taboos faced by women in the Arab world as they dare to express their sexuality. With the apparent simplicity of the children’s drawings, they appear to be balanced on the cusp of fairytale: a winged horse in soft peach, a mermaid on emerald-green for example. But look again: they’re critiquing gender and exploring sexuality with breasts a recurring motif.
Intertwining overt sexuality and cruelty with humour, Afsoon’s exquisitely collaged work references an obscure 19th century tale she found in a Persian flea market. She also presents the engaging ‘Private Life of a Bag’ – a series of small bundles of ephemera from five different handbags. Afsoon explains how, as a child in Iran, she was fascinated by all the little things a woman put into her bag which showed she was a mysterious woman with another life. The items represented the double life that women lead, their inner thoughts and what they show -or are allowed to show- to the outside world. They also speak volumes about the lives, values and perhaps the secrets of these imagined women, and the similarities between them reminds us of what unites us, as women.
At the other end of the gallery, colourful applique wall hangings by Esmerelda Kosmatopulos also evoke the bright cheer of a modern storybook. The narrative however is of ‘a white woman raised in the cradle of European Enlightenment’ and ‘a man from the land of the Pharaohs’. It’s a love story riddled with fearful and pervasive prejudice at the meeting of cultures, based on Esmeralda’s own experience of mixed marriage within Egyptian society.
Alongside, there’s a stunning ceramic work, Floating Utopia by loulia Chante who describes finding herself here, a land of opportunity, by chance, burden-free and without expectations. For me, it brings to mind a driftwood ark, onto which human figures clamber. Below the surface, sharks circles over an amphora of wine while a vulture-headed beast sits atop an age-old cactus and mythical beasts graze in the sky by an ever watchful sun. And whilst it could be the journey to paradise, you can feel the deep dark stories below the surface.
Behind, there’s the eternal flow of the water of life, a mother’s milk, in a pretty pink water feature, because women – whatever their stories – are at the heart of the circle of life.
This wonderful exhibition is a basket of dichotomies, woven skilfully together like strands of wicker. It’s both feminine and soulful, it’s delicate yet speaks of strength, it’s familiar and yet stretching. These works and many more can be seen until 27 April.
Small Bones of Courage is a Spazju Kreattiv Commission, curated by Najlaa El-Ageli & Margerita Pulè, produced by Noon Art Projects & Unfinished Art Space, supported by the Malta Tourism Authority.
