NGĦADDU Ż-ŻMIEN
Home is somewhat of a mirage—shimmering, but always out of reach.
The paintings of Diogo Patarra and Ed Dingli perform not too differently to mirages; shimmering illusions that toe the line between what has been lived and what hasn’t. Portugal and Malta bask in a gold light which envelopes everything and which casts strong shadows across each surface. This is precisely where both artists—in their painting debut—position themselves: at the doorway between interior and exterior space, where the sun is about to blind them from seeing where they are walking into, and transports them instead to the memory of where they have come from.
How different are those two places?
Ngħaddu ż-Żmien (Passing Time) presents a shared sense of familiarity between two artists who found solace in the fact that they are forging home in each other’s place of birth. The project of home is open-ended, and goes beyond simply the place in which we settle. This is perhaps the basis of nostalgia—a simultaneous feeling of being home sick and sick of home—which has long featured across the history of art. The conversations between both artists have fuelled a collage of different experiences. The material joins the immaterial in what becomes an eclectic process of narrative-making. To honour their Maltese and Portuguese roots they forge new networks not only with the people they meet but also the ephemera they collect—bus tickets, handwritten receipts, posters and programs, branding assets and their own musings and sketches from across a two year period. They emerge as fragments that don’t allow them to forget how they’ve gone about their time in each place. On canvas, and paper as much as on ceramic tile they absorb what they have taken in and forge a landscape of their own.
Time is a fundamental dimension of the project; time spent collecting, as much as time spent sharing. It was an early choice in our path together to display found object alongside work by both artists. Doing away with traditional hierarchies where source and artwork are separated, this expresses time spent in the most mundane, common place and often overlooked way which—they seem to proclaim— is what actually constructs our notions of home. The exhibition proposes a common space narrating influences, ideas and attitudes and the experiences of their subjects (both animate and inanimate) mirror their own.
Colour follows them on this journey and here I think is where the works of both artists depart from notions of nostalgia. There is, within the ochres, pinks, lilacs, greens and blues, a fresh outlook. Whilst Dingli fragments and creates planes between the different surfaces of what he sees, Patarra exaggerates scale and the characteristics of who and what he comes across. With colour, they find the chance to establish their own way to freeze time. Line is essential in defining the mirage they are producing whilst text features across it in ways that we don’t often see within painting. We can perceive the graphic design background of both artists, but also their simultaneous ushering into painting. There is intention across their compositions and this comes across as a strong bond between both. They stand at either side of a looking glass and dance as it spins across an axis.
Language is perhaps a subliminal, discreet thread which weaves the work of both artists together. They borrow the sounds and grammars of each other’s country to frame what they see: ‘Xbejba tal-irdum’ (Girl from the cliffs) and Os génios vivem para sempre (Geniuses live forever) celebrate the musical quality which they insist is one of their most important influences.
This is a project about exchange, with an understanding that culture and identity are not phenomena that are static, but rather realities which are transitional, not unlike a mirage. The beauty of a mirage is that soon after it comes, it goes. We walk through the exhibition hung through a place, drunk in the abundance of its colour and expression. We exit not knowing where we have been but knowing that we loved the cradle of its shimmer.
