Maria Borg might be something of a clairvoyant, and MUŻA has definitely got its fingers on the pulse.
The Museum, conceived as a catalyst of social cohesion, has chosen to kick off its 2021 series of exhibitions with ‘Homebody,’ a collection of paintings of everyday objects that take on a life of their own. Conceived six years ago before the current pandemic in which everybody has become or been forced into becoming a ‘homebody,’ the exhibition certainly strikes a chord with an audience who has established a closer connection with the household contents surrounding them.
A calm and quietly collected Maria states that this was not her objective. “I did not intend it to be, but it’s very relevant to how people are living these days,” she chuckles. “Most painters are very introverted anyway. If you are obsessed with the material as much as I am, you spend a lot of time indoors alone, listening to podcasts or music and painting lost in your thoughts.”
The idea behind Maria’s first solo exhibition originated when after completing her degree in fine arts, she took up a four-month residency in Newburgh near Fife in Scotland. Finding herself with the luxury of a massive studio after the ‘stolen spaces in her parent’s house[GK1] , Maria, in her solitude, found herself unexpectedly turning towards the familiar. “ I was feeling isolated and cut off and found myself drawn to more mundane, everyday objects such as clothing and fabric. The more I found myself in an extraordinary location, the more I became introspective,” she recalls.
Previously Maria’s art had been instigated by memory. “I used to visit my nanna’s house, who has since passed away, and emotionally felt I wanted to hang onto a lot of old and interesting items. She had these gollywog dolls, which I started collecting and painting one by one.” In Scotland, unable to surround herself with memories, she painted the few possessions she had at hand, including her clothes, her pillow, and duvet. “I wanted to create my own sense of home, but the thought process was an organic one,” she asserts. Upon her return to Malta, Maria had to stop painting for a while to focus on her new job as a primary school art teacher at Chiswick. In time she began renting a new studio in Birkirkara and resumed painting where she had left off. “I looked back at the garbage bag and shirt I had painted in Scotland, and I felt the story wasn’t finished. I had to conclude what I had begun, and in a way, I feel I have done that with this exhibition.”
Following a brief hiatus, the first object Maria decided to commit to canvas was her new painting coat, stimulated as she was by its patterns of “garish” colours. Next, a denim jacket in her favourite hue, pink. “There was an element of I’m going to paint all my wardrobe, once you have a new idea, you don’t want to limit yourself. The more I experimented, the more I was learning what worked and what didn’t,” she explains. Maria simultaneously explored a phase painting darker coloured objects, fascinated by the challenge of coaxing tones out of a very limited range. The black bra, which is being used in artwork to promote the exhibition, had a sheerness “which I thought would make an amazing painting if I managed to capture that texture.” Likewise, she wanted to see if she could also nail the reflective surface of a lone black leather glove as it had the shininess of the black refuse bag.
‘Homebody’ is being exhibited in MUŻA’s ‘Community Space’, which was curated to evoke an intimate setting. A simple curtain, through which the paintings can also be glimpsed, reiterates the sheer fabric of the bra, separating the paintings from the outside world where “the only things that matter are the works.” After months of painting in her Birkirkara Studio, Maria was itching to showcase her work and came across MUŻA’s public call a week before it expired. “I was excited about the new exhibition spaces the Museum was offering. MUŻA is doing such a great job of attracting contemporary artists and bringing the place alive.” In this day and age, without the possibility of weekend city breaks overseas, Maltese are being encouraged to re-visit and support their own thriving and eclectic art scene and thus become tourists within their own country.
Maria’s paintings, especially those items of apparel that float on the canvas independent of the human that might wear them, assume a life of their own, provoking an interplay between presence and absence, whilst inviting the viewer to develop their own context and relationship with these everyday objects.
“Anything you paint will take on a presence’” is Maria’s take on this interplay. “It is not important that the objects are mine.” A presence is implied because even if no human inhabits the painting, “You can feel that there was someone. If it were a photograph, you would say the human is not in the shot but on the other side of the camera.” In one painting of a magenta cloth thrown over a human being, the other extreme is true. In the ultimate subject she painted for this exhibition, the human is “quite literally there.” This absence and presence tug of war is “fascinating and at the same time frustrating because it doesn’t give the full story. There’s a gap. Whom does it belong to? Why one glove? What happened to the other one?”
“I had a very clear idea of what I wanted.; I feel the work speaks for itself; I consider myself a painter more than a conceptual artist,” Maria insists. “The reasoning behind the exhibition was an aesthetic and a visual one. It is all about colour and texture. Creating an illusion through layers and technique is why I paint more than anything else.” Maria’s medium of choice is oil, which she feels suits her “patient character.” “I know it sounds cheesy, but I was destined to become an oil painter.” Aged 16, she became enthralled with the classical painting of Rembrandt and Caravaggio. “Oil is a waiting game, really. You paint a layer, make sure it is thin enough, then add a layer the next day; it becomes your friend. You can work on different smaller paintings at the same time.” However, Maria prefers to mostly work on larger canvases, which means that by the time she has completed one layer, she is done for the day anyway. “I use charcoal, for large scale studies, where I need to express myself quickly. I tried playing with scale, but I feel you can relate more to something which is life-size.”
2021 promises to be a busy year for Maria. She is currently working on a series of paintings, which can be seen as an extension to homebody’s obsession with texture. She magnifies the patterns on flowered bedsheets and wrapping paper and introduces snippets of sentences and phrases that are echoes of sentences and song lyrics “that I wish I had said and which I wanted to share.” The intimate and sensual setting that anchors a painting of rumpled bed sheets is juxtaposed for instance, with the three words of yearning ‘please don’t go.’ “The sentence hits hard both ways. Everyone has said or felt that for someone at some point.” Maria has painted consistently through the pandemic, “going a bit crazy after a very long time of not doing anything.” “I’m lucky that my job allows me to have time to paint even during the week,” she reflects gratefully.
Homebody, open studio days, and another upcoming exhibition, there’s no hanging up Maria’s paintbrush this year.
Homebody runs at MUŻA until the 21st February 2021.
Maria will be present at MUŻA during ‘Meet the Artist’ encounters every Sunday in February from 1pm – 4pm.
This project is part-financed by the European Union under the European Regional Development Fund – European Structural and Investment Funds 2014-2020
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