This work is part of the collective exhibition ART INTERRUPTED, held at il-Kamra ta' Fuq from the 19th of March to the 17th of April 2022.   

 

Located in the space where delusion meets reality, in a nebulous psychic vacuum, the painting is loosely inspired by literary, artistic, and cinematic sources. Mythological and psychological undertones are pervasive in the painting, where a colourful composition, which evokes a sense of serenity, is overshadowed by the turbulent spectre of dark sexuality and death. The figures in the painting are at one with the sea creature, which envelopes them and encapsulates them, in a seemingly tender embrace, which is yet a paradoxical constricting hold. They are delicately caressed and viciously attacked by the intuitive seagull, an allegorical representation of the path to the afterlife. It is truly a fine divide that exists between euphoria and anguish, between sanity and madness, between the sublime and the monstrous.