‘Nature doesn’t have a voice, but people do’
Last chance to see the Valletta Contemporary exhibition Comino will be different next summer, showing until May 11
In 2022, Comino became a centre of contention between activists and business owners. The two sides debated over the role, ownership and legacy of the land around the Blue Lagoon but, more broadly, all of Comino.
The state of Comino and its future became the centre of many heated discussions, leading to August of that year, when the
Minister of Tourism, Clayton Bartolo, told Times of Malta, “Things will be different, especially by next summer. This means we will not have the same issues we had this summer.”
The Valletta Contemporary exhibition Comino will be different next summer directly references Bartolo’s comment. It simultaneously asks how Comino has changed over the past few decades and how it can change in the future.
The exhibition, curated by Maria Eileen Fsadni, captures one’s attention even before one enters the gallery thanks to the installation piece Xandru lKonkos by Sheldon Saliba. It peaks out from the lower floor to reach the eyes of any passersby on the street outside.
The title of this work is a nod to Antoine Camilleri’s Xandru lImħabba, but it is reimagined for a 21st-century audience using concrete and natural materials found on Comino, its shape this time mimicking a 5G ariel.
Xandru l-Konkos also comments on the Comino hotel and how it has impacted the island’s landscape. The exhibition tackled the hotel’s controversial role in the island’s development, so much so that, as one walks to the gallery’s lower level, one encounter a piece of text by Daphne Caruana Galizia from an article on Comino from Taste & Flair magazine in 2005.
The text begins, “Comino is not uninhabited”, reminding the reader/viewer that the island is
not just a vacation site that people enjoy on the weekend by lounging at the hotel or from the comfort of a day cruise, but rather, it is a home and was a community.
As the article outlines, the island was home to a rich farming community until the land was leased in 1960 to a British businessman. From then on, this community has dwindled to just two people from the same family.
Inigo Taylor’s photograph, IlForn ta’ Kemmuna, documents the unofficial face of Comino, Salvu Vella. Vella is one of the only people left who witnessed the extreme shift in the island’s development and the extreme environmental degradation it has been subject to.
The environmental degradation of the island was a subject tackled throughout the exhibition itself. From Saliba’s work, Coastal Technoartefacts (Revisited), which is a reimagining of the Comino chapel that houses waste found on the coastline, to the photo by Taylor titled LGħassa, which features what Fsadni called “an unfortunate symbol of Comino” – the rotting pineapple.
The power of Comino will be different next summer, lies in showing that the statement is possible and gives the viewer solutions to those original questions. One solution is the important role held by activist groups and the power of intelligent, well-organised protests.
As seen in the work Kemmuna ta’ Kulħadd by Joanna Demarco and Tuna Kemmuna Lura by Lisa Attard. Both of these, in their own distinct ways, document Moviment Graffitti reclaiming the island in 2022, protesting the flooding of deckchairs, overcrowding, over-commercialisation and lack of waste management prevalent in Comino till today.
But the exhibition also proposes a more radical approach to improving the state of island, through the impactful video, Kemmuna Nation by Mario Asef.
Kemmuna Nation is a manifesto that proposes “nature is the new proletariat” and that the island should be taken from man and returned to nature. Simply utilising human beings as a conduit to ensure the natural landscape is safeguarded.
“This exhibition isn’t just about the public land, the people being impacted, it’s also about the nature that is being impacted that doesn’t actually have a voice. We are that voice. Even though it is protected, it remains forgotten and disrespected. It is up to us to safeguard it,” said Fsadni.
Valletta Contemporary is organising the exhibition in collaboration with Friends of the Earth Malta and Il-Forn ta’ Kemmuna. It will remain open until May 11.