The exhibition Silent Narratives by Kevin Sciberras features a new collection of urban scenes including Valletta, Mdina, Vittoriosa, Senglea, Naxxar and Victoria in Gozo. The artist aims to turn cities into reflections, and streets into silent poems.
There is often an unexpected stillness and perspective in Sciberras’s works that sets them apart from conventional urban representations. While the subject matter like rooftops, facades and streetscapes may at first seem familiar, several elements in his paintings often defy expectation:
An absence of human presence: Although Sciberras’s works depict vibrant, lived-in cities, they are completely devoid of figures, making the urban environment feel strangely quiet, almost dreamlike. This absence shifts the focus onto architecture as a silent witness to time, history, and transformation. It is an artistic choice that evokes solitude rather than spectacle.
Elevated and fragmented viewpoints: rather than painting from a pedestrian perspective, Sciberras often adopts aerial or elevated viewpoints, enhancing depth and reorganising space. This choice turns the viewer into a detached observer, almost like a bird, a drone, or a memory scanning a place from above. It’s a visual strategy that removes the viewer from linear time and conventional realism.
Tension between realism and abstraction: at first glance, his works may appear realistic, but upon closer inspection, many compositions verge on the abstract. Shadows and architectural rhythms take on a compositional logic of their own, often more painterly than documentary.
Silent narratives: despite the architectural focus, the paintings are deeply narrative, though not in an obvious way. The stories are embedded in weathered walls, empty windows, and the patina of age. Through intricate renderings of rooftops, aerial perspectives, townhouses, facades, and streetscapes, Sciberras invites viewers to pause and listen to the quiet stories embedded in our built environment.
Timelessness: many viewers are surprised by how the paintings do not situate themselves in a specific time. By removing people, cars, and signage, Sciberras creates scenes that could belong to any decade. It gives his work a universal quality. They’re Maltese, yes, but also deeply meditative and outside the everyday.
For Sciberras, the use of oranges, blues, and purples goes beyond mere aesthetic choice. These hues carry symbolic weight and help articulate the emotional and narrative atmosphere of his urban scenes. Each colour plays a distinct role in shaping the mood and meaning behind his work.
Orange is often used to evoke the warmth of the Mediterranean sun and the glow of Malta’s characteristic limestone buildings. In the absence of human figures, this hue becomes a stand-in for human presence, memory, and daily life, a warmth that lingers in empty streets and silent walls. It also reflects the temporal aspect of light, particularly during sunrise or sunset, hinting at transitions, aging, and change.
Blue introduces a sense of quiet detachment. Whether representing shadows, skies, or architectural coolness, it evokes introspection and timelessness. It symbolises the spiritual and contemplative mood of each scene, as if inviting the viewer to reflect on the passage of time and the layered histories beneath the surfaces.
Purple is perhaps the most unexpected of the three. Its appearance suggests a departure from reality and an entry into something more emotional, even metaphysical. It may appear in shadows, distant skies or mixed into stonework, hinting at memory, imagination and unseen layers of the urban landscape. It bridges the warmth of orange and the calm of blue, creating a lyrical undertone in his work.
Silent Narratives opens at 7.00 p.m on September 5 and runs until September 12.
