Mediterranean Institute Seminar: Mediterranean and Modernist Multiplicity in Art

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Guest Speaker: Professor Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci, University of Malta

Venue: Mediterranean Institute, Tal-Ħursun Farmhouse, University of Malta (Msida Campus)

Date: Tuesday 21st November 2023 at 18:30

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The Mediterranean Institute is delighted to be hosting the inaugural Mediterranean Institute Seminar for this academic year with a talk by Professor Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci, who will be discussing Mediterranean and Modernist Multiplicity in Art. The Seminar will take place on Tuesday, 21st of November at 18:30 at the Ħursun Farmhouse, the Institute’s historic premises at the University of Malta Msida Campus.

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The colonial global expansion of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries roped in a corresponding aesthetic language - a language not only reflecting but also enhancing and defending the very same interests of economic and industrial hegemony. This power relationship created a vertical-linear methodological approach in art historical studies. Artistic movements and developments were, and still are, studied within these parameters, and, more specifically, solely in relation to cosmopolitan centres. Verticality has long been sustained as an approach to studying international artistic relationships. The paradox is that postcolonial and other related studies have appropriated that very same colonial language and replaced it with a neo-articulation, one which nevertheless addresses the same content the same hegemonic interests. This talk will attempt to provide a different approach to the study of Mediterranean Modern art, namely a horizontal-diagonal perspective. Aside from delving into this methodological approach, the talk will frame the Mediterranean basin as a region in its own right. This introductory talk tackles the suppression of collective consciousness, engendering thus the fragmentation of Mediterranean interconnectedness, an interconnection that was displaced by the verticality of the ‘master-slave’ dichotomy. The artistic Europeanisation of North African cultures and their de-Ottomanisation, together with the Greek upheavals and the effect these seismic events had on the development of Modern art will here be placed under artistic scrutiny. The Malta-Mediterranean connection will play a central role in the debate.

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Prof. Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci studied Philosophy, Law and the Arts. He graduated from the University of Malta, from the State University of Kiev, and from the State University of Moscow, and undertook postgraduate research studies at the State University of Milan. He has authored several books on Modern and Contemporary Art, Philosophy of Art, and Maltese twentieth-century art. 

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Schembri Bonaci is the founder of the Fine Arts Programme and of the Modern & Contemporary programme within the Department of Art and Art History, Artistic Director of the APS Mdina Cathedral Contemporary Art Biennale, and was Artistic Director of the Strada Stretta Concept, a cultural programme under the auspices of the Valletta Cultural Agency, until 2022. His recent publications include  a philosophical-methodological treatise on the works of Frank Portelli and Antoine Camilleri. He has just concluded his series of publications on the Maltese artist Josef Kalleya’s visual dialogue with Dante’s Divina Commedia and a novel history of Mediterranean Modern Art. His 'Metal and Silence' work formed part of the Venice Biennale 2022 Malta Pavilion.

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The Mediterranean Institute Seminar is free and open to the public. Students are particularly encouraged to attend. A Q&A session will follow on from the Seminar. Attendees are cordially invited for refreshments after the event. For more information on the Mediterranean Institute Seminar, kindly get in touch with the MI Administrator, Ms Isabelle Abela at isabelle.abela@um.edu.mt 

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Please click here for further details on the event. 

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