Unfinished Business

Since the spark of an idea, just five years ago, Unfinished Art Space has matured into a respected contributor to Malta’s visual arts scene. As Unfinished celebrates its fifth birthday, founder Margerita Pulè writes about how the organisation started, what it has achieved till now, and its plans for the next five years.

nfinished Art Space is one of the few of independent non-commercial art spaces in Malta. Independent art spaces have had a potted history in Malta; from the now legendary MCA in Marsa, to the ingenious itinerant programme of Fragmenta Malta, but not all have stood the test of time. Unfinished Art Space was borne out of this environment, out of a need for a flexible and open space, one that champions contemporary, experimental and research-based practices, while also providing a supportive context within which to work.

One important characteristic of Unfinished is that we, and our programme are nomadic and fluid. We have produced work with and within national institutions, but we also work in far less conventional spaces, such as a disused building, in public space, or in an online environment. Our first collaboration is still one of my favourites; with Parking Street Events, we recreated Il-Kamra ta’ Barra beside a huge construction site that had been a blight on a neighbourhood for years. Recreating the atmosphere of respectability and elegance in the street, literally bringing the kamra (room) barra (outside), complete with old clock and chintzy furniture, we invited passersby and neighbours to drink a cup of tea with us on our sofa and tell us about their concerns for the neighbourhood. Thus, Unfinished Art Space was born, often proposing a critical or political position with commentary on feminist and postcolonial questions, working with artists to research and question these areas.

Our early initiatives were mostly impromptu affairs, produced with friends and well-wishers. In 2020, in a small break in the clouds of covid-lockdown, we put on probably our most quickly-produced exhibition to date. Multi-disciplinary artist Charlene Galea had amassed hundreds of photographs of clubbing scenes, from her travels around Europe, from London and Ibiza, to Morocco and Romania. At a time when clubs all over Europe were closed, images of the exhilaration, intimacy and beauty of these dance scenes brought a club-like queue to the door of the empty house we had commandeered for the project.

After this, our projects quickly became more ambitious. Our two feminist shows, which coincided in 2020 and 2022 with International Women’s Day (both funded through Arts Council Malta schemes) allowed us to collaborate more widely and invite international artists to work with us. Memorable events include Romeo Roxmann Gatt and dancers performing My Womxn is a God My God is a Womxn in MUZA’s community space (part of Strangers in a Strange Land), Syowia Kyambi travelling from Kenya to install and perform her hard-hitting Kaspale’s Playground, and, in the wind and rain of an early January morning, Edith Dekyndt on a cherry-picker in Valletta’s Independence Square, filming the statue of Queen Victoria for her short film Nursery Crime (part of The Ordinary Lives of Women, co-curated with Elise Billiard Pisani).

The coming few years are all about international collaborations. In early 2024, we will be working in Barcelona with curators Alexia Medici and Pilar Cruz and a number of Maltese and Catalan artists on a site-specific exhibition Mater www.unfinishedartspace.org

Longer-term, we will continue to collaborate and research. We will also continue to support artists, colleagues and the creative sector in general, working towards an environment where more importance is given to contemporary art and artists. The name Unfinished Art Space refers to the process of the creative act; always evolving and never quite finished – we hope that we will keep evolving, developing, experimenting and being ‘unfinished’ for many more years to come.

Read the full feature on www.artpaper.press

ERICA GIUSTA