The Cover

In Search Of Line

A Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti Exhibition

Opening soon at the new Victor Pasmore Gallery, St Paul’s Street, Valletta.

Moving away from the objets d’art formula exhibition FPM has now become synonymous with, our next exhibition endeavour will see one of history of art’s greatest subjects of exploration: the line. Both on the page as well as into space and time, the line has manifested itself in many ways, from drawing to weaving, writing, mark-making, singing, and storytelling. In Search of Line will explore these fascinations and break down ‘line’ to its core elements and explore the artist’s drive to create and represent images, meanings, and emotions through line. The line is often a trace of a manual gesture, a trace of the free expression of artistic thought, the expression of the artist’s ideas and impressions. Through the works of the local modern artists, together with Victor Pasmore himself, this exhibition will aim to take us out for a walk, just as Klee’s line does, and freely explore and understand the vast spectrum which is line.

As with all our exhibitions, the Foundation is collaborating with a number of contemporary artists whom we have invited to engage with various aspects of the curatorial narrative, both within and outside of the exhibition space.

For more information head to www.victorpasmoregallery.com.

Oliver Friggieri (27 March 1947 – 21 November 2020), the well-known Maltese poet, novelist, literary critic, and philosopher, often spread the two polar colours of politics. In each of the two cases, the colour in itself translated into a number of relevant associations and inferences for the corresponding partisanship, so much so that it becomes iconic in its significance of political belonging—almost tribal—for the party to be understood more as a club than an organ of a political programme. This article is written to explore the philosophical vision of the author as reflected in various literary texts in favour of a more harmonious environment, genuinely humane, and sincere in its empathy with the fundamental needs of the people, and the values that he embraced, and still conveys, through the art of word.

I aim to examine Friggieri’s poetic consciousness and examine it as a representative and empathetic sensibility that dramatises injustices, violent episodes, and the stagnation of the political system. In his autobiography Fjuri li ma Jinxfux, Oliver Friggieri explicitly articulates his political sensibility which he then conveys in more indirect and insinuating ways with lyrics, for example, through the lyrical address where Friggieri empathises with the figure of the Self and assimilates in it the grief of others, even if he built it with dehumanising, unimaginable, and self-ironic metaphors that, effectively, reflect the treatment of the Other on the same Self. The poet explains how Raymond Caruana’s and Karin Grech’s homicides left a huge impact on him as a writer.1 These observations are gathered in one argument: this is Friggieri who gave up his voice to the afflicted multitude, this is the amplification of the muffled voice.