Interview /Los Angeles/ Adrian Abela Venice 2022
JOANNA DELIA
If God was an Octopus AND OTHER STORIES FROM THE ARTIST FROM FGURA WHO MOVED TO LOS ANGELES
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that are not necessarily everyone’s cup of tea. It takes a lot of discipline to make extra-terrestrial, extra-national, extra-social, and extra-corporeal observations. To shed all constraints taught by time spent in society while studying, interpreting and criticising this same society.
drian Abela is, in my opinion, the master of perspective. A visual poet. In simple words, he is a skilled and brilliant interpreter, able to communicate what makes the Maltese, and people in general, tick. And what should make them tick but doesn’t. Abela Performs quasi miracles in his skill at removing filters and inventing, applying or discovering others. His work is a testament to his being so in tune with our collective consciousness it almost seems omnipotent at times. It is almost as though he can see and explore extra dimensions. To my knowledge, there are very few people as capable as Abela at exploring the fantastical aspects of the intricate web, which is Malta’s ‘culture’. It is almost impossible to interpret his worldview better than he does himself - and in this, he takes on the epitome of the role of the artist. Abela studied architecture and civil engineering in Malta and Milan, then moved to California to study for an MFA in sculpture at UCLA. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
He applied what is probably a lot of effort to answer the most pressing questions in his mind. In the mind of the average Maltese boy - questions such as what is this God everyone is so obsessed with? Why do we spend money on looking for this black oil but not on saving drowning people? Why do we award citizenship to machines and not to our brothers? Why do the people pretend they can’t control the sprawl of concrete as if it were alive and proper weed? Why do we think we’re special?
On trying to analyse his work, one almost feels as though Abela can transport his mind to inhabit ‘God’s overseeing eye and sees the earth in a crystal ball of sorts zooming in and out of the most intimate details that make up anthropological systems across time. It’s as though he
can zoom in and out with his fingers and study why what is what, and when it happened - while understanding that even if he did have this crystal ball to play with, he might still be far off or outright wrong. In my mind, this skill results in mesmerising interpretations and interpretations
“I am aware that my work is very much influenced by growing up Catholic in a post-independence state searching for its identity. Growing up, I was very aware of the close marriage between organised religion, or so-called spirituality and politics. Later on, the Maltese government itself, on one occasion, convinced the population to invest unheard of amounts of tax money at the time in oil exploration by calling the well ‘Madonna of the Oil’, as if the newfound wealth was a miracle. In my sculptural work, I attempt to explore the parallels and contradictions with African Migration to Continental Europe through Maltese territorial waters.” . . The work Il-Madonna taz-zejt explored the bizarrely maliciously over-funded oil exploration efforts when compared to search and rescue efforts in Maltese territorial waters. Oil symbolism is everywhere - large black round paintings, with subtle iridescent paint details of maps and de-
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