APS Mdina Cathedral Contemporary Art Biennale opens this month

The APS Mdina Cathedral Contemporary Art Biennale, now in its second running under the artistic direction of Dr Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci, will be held between the 13th November 2017 until the 7th January 2018. The exhibition, The Mediterranean: A Sea of Conflicting Spiritualties, will present original works by artists from diverse cultures across the globe at the Mdina Cathedral Museum.

At a time when the arts are increasingly being called upon to respond to the contemporary political scene, the APS Mdina Biennale allows for the coming together of artists from diverse cultural backgrounds in an exploration and expression of the age-old problem of human identity.

Unlike the previous Art Biennale, held in 2015/2016, this year’s exhibition will be presented in a single space, within the 17th century baroque walls of the Silent City’s Cathedral Museum, merging Malta’s history, culture, and traditions with contemporary works by local and international artists. Moreover, this year, the exhibition will focus on the struggles faced by the Mediterranean and its surrounding countries which continue to be experienced today. Malta’s position at the centre of the Mediterranean Sea places it in an ideal location to allow for an artistic exchange between these diverse nationalities, cultures, and conflicting spiritualities that surround the Mediterranean.

Originally an exhibition showing Catholic and religious art, today the APS Mdina Biennale welcomes both local and international artists with participants from various countries including: Malta, France, Israel, Portugal, Germany, Greece, Austria, USA, Russia, UK, Australia, Italy, Serbia, Lebanon, Jordan, Poland, Latvia, Georgia, and Lithuania.

For this year’s edition the Maltese modern art section of the exhibition will be dedicated to the experimental Cubist paintings of Frank Portelli and Esprit Barthet as part of the international conference ‘Cubsim Beyond Paris: Mediterranean Interpretations and the Crystallisation of Cubism - A Maltese Test Case’ organised by the Department of Art and Art History, Faculty of Arts, University of Malta, to be held on 15th December 2017.

The APS Mdina Cathedral Contemporary Art Biennale 2017-18 is supported by APS Bank.

For more information, visit the Facebook page The APS Mdina Cathedral Contemporary Art Biennale 2017 or visit the official website: https://www.mdinabiennale.com/