An exhibition by Chinese visual artist Yang Tang has just opened at the Malta Society of Arts.
Two Springs brings together two distinct bodies of works, deriving from different places and different moments in time.
The first consists of oil paintings of peach blossoms produced in Jiangnan, China, in 2021 − images that are imbued with a quiet sense of presence.
The second consists of around 60 small digital paintings, presented as fine art prints, of wild flowers spotted in Malta and created between October 2025 and May 2026.
However, according to the artist, this exhibition is not purely about flowers.
“It presents a shift in the way of seeing: from a way of looking centred on the self, to a way of looking that gradually lets go of the self and returns to the thing itself,” Yang says.
An invitation to pause and wonder
Each work in this exhibition focuses on a single plant, foregrounding its delicate intricacy and inviting the viewer to pause and wonder at the ‘little’ things in nature.
Yang admits that her initial plan was to depict spring through the depiction of peach blossoms in China and cacti in Malta. However, when she arrived on the island, she could not help but notice the wild flowers.
“From autumn to spring, the island becomes completely green. There are flowers everywhere − along roads, in fields, between stones,” she said.
She also realised that people barely paid attention to the individual flowers.
Change in perspective
“People see the colour, the whole landscape, but not each individual plant.”
Through her paintings, Yang invites viewers to experience the perceptual shift that shaped her own way of seeing.
Unlike the peach blossom series, which she completed over 10 days in the ancient town of Tangqi, the Malta works emerged through months of observation. Each digital painting demanded hours of sustained attention and a gradual surrender of preconceived ideas.
“A small drawing on the iPad can take six or seven hours. I had to keep looking, keep adjusting and slowly let go of what I wanted to put into the image,” Yang says.
The difference was not only one of technique or timescale, but of perception.
While the Chinese oil paintings “form a space that the viewer can enter”, the Malta works ask viewers “to move closer, slow down and stay with them”, responding to each plant as they might to a chance encounter in nature.
“I spent a lot of time walking, observing and waiting for the plants to appear. Almost every drawing comes from a specific encounter. I recorded the date and the exact place where I found it,” the artist continues.
“In this way, the work becomes less about me making an image, and more about letting something appear.”
Two Springs runs until July 30 at the Art Galleries of the Malta Society of Arts, 219 Republic Street, Valletta. The exhibition is open Monday and Friday from 9am to 7pm; Tuesday to Thursday from 9am to noon and from 5pm to 8pm; and Saturday from 9am to 1pm. Admission is free. For more information, visit www.artsmalta.org or www.facebook.com/maltasocietyofarts.
