Interview /Exhibition / Malta November - December 2021 MALTA
IMPOSSIBLE CONVERSATIONS Impossible Conversations, a first solo exhibition of terracotta sculptures by Francesca Balzan, will run at Studio 87, Ta’ Liesse Hill, Valletta from 26 November to 11 December 2021. C U R AT E D B Y JUSTINE BALZAN DEMAJO
Fran Balzan with some of her terracotta works
You’re best known as an art historian and curator. When did you start working in sculpture? I’ve been working away quietly on my sculpture for many, many years, mainly in the clay medium, while I developed a more public profile with my museum and research work. In recent years, I’ve tentatively started showing my sculpture on Instagram and in a few collective exhibitions, until I took the decision to dedicate myself entirely to my art and to work on a solo exhibition. I’m not getting any younger and some things cannot be
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put off forever, despite how difficult it is to expose to the public what you truly, deeply care most about. What is this new body of work about? When Justine Balzan Demajo, of Studio 87, floated the idea of an exhibition in her gallery I thought it would be fun to do something site specific. As I’m fascinated by faces, I wanted to create portraits and character studies of people who worked, lived, and passed through the Ta’ Liesse area just outside the gal-
lery itself. This entailed a lot of research devoted to finding historic figures, people from the past who really did have this connection with Ta’ Liesse, and to recreate them in clay and imbue them with animated conversation. Unlike previous work of mine that concentrated only on the face and relied on facial expressions to animate the sculpture, for this collection I wanted to go larger and create busts in painted clay which was then fired to terracotta. This meant that I could include clothing and accessories which gives the viewer a refer-
ence to a time period. The sculptures are coloured, again a new innovation, as my previous work tended to be monochrome.
What are your sources? Who are you depicting? I researched extensively in that fascinating (and huge) collection of early 20th century passport applications at the National Archives of Malta (Santo Spirito Branch). I went through several box files and hundreds of applications
