Għadajjar Għajnejja: Ebbs and Flows – A solo exhibition by Miriam Galea

Għadajjar Għajnejja: Ebbs and Flows

A solo exhibition by Miriam Galea

Supported by Arts Council Malta
Sponsored by the Farsons Foundation 

Opening, featuring performance by Ruth Borg: 22 October, 19:00

Elements float before me, in a flow of pale blue shot with waves of fluo pink, blending seamlessly, making it hard to make out the borders between them. Our eyes dance from one side to the other, rising and falling as if with the ebb of a mild wave, a liquid reverie, asking us: where does one begin and the other end? What are the edges of things? Does anything define us?

Following the books Ors and Ġewwieni/Innards, Miriam Galea ventures into a spatial dimension in the gallery, with a recent body of more formal work that tests the limits of nothingness, tracing barely visible, diluted brushstrokes before they evaporate into thin air. Exploring the distinction between absence and presence, and questioning their very definition, leads the artist to reduce to the essential. This involves a contrast between ambiguity and definition, contrasting gestures in the freedom and movement of water and the petrification brought about by analysing it.

Chasing a trace, like a spirit, is also a process of rendering the invisible visible. The work remains open to a quiet tension between presence and absence, between what takes form and what threatens to disappear.

There is an attempt to contain the uncontainable, while embracing water’s resistance to fixed form, definition, and in turn, visibility as traditionally understood. Water, both transparent and fluid, invisible and ephemeral, becomes at once material and metaphor: its liquidity passes from the formal language of the work to the carnal in themes of motherhood and the female body, and outward into the instability and transience of contemporary “liquid lives”, as seen by philosopher Zygmunt Bauman – appearing more figuratively as isolated figures seeking connection as they roam around barren landscapes.

Side Events:
1 November, 6pm: Exhibition tour X Marta Marta book launch featuring Aphroconfuso and Loranne Vella

11 November, 7pm: Catalogue launch and Finissage, in discussion with Raphael Vella

Miriam Galea – Artist Biography 

Miriam Galea (1983) is a writer and artist. She is currently doing a Masters in Fine Arts – drawing at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels (ArBA-EsA), after completing a Bachelor’s in Drawing from the same school, and previously graduating in Art and English from the University of Malta. Originally from  an island often invisible on maps, she is fascinated by transparency and nothingness, which she explores through the limits of the trace, using diluted washes in pale hues and touches of colour, thus testing the boundaries of oblivion. Her work pursues the barely visible trace that, little by little, materialises into a more present mark. At the crossroads of literature and art, she is also interested in the notion of fluidity as ephemeral and unpredictable, and in drawing as a natural extension of writing. She is the author and illustrator of the picture books Ors (Bear), published by Kotba Calleja, Malta, in 2024, and Ġewwieni/Innards (Kotba Calleja, 2025), that also explore contemporary resistance to definition and the liquidity of contemporary isolation.

Her artwork has been exhibited in several shows and her writings are published in several anthologies such as Antoloġija 1 by Aphroconfuso, Antoloġija 24 by Kotba Calleja and Ktieb għall-Ħruq (Books for Burning) by Inizjamed. She also studied Theatre at the Drama Unit, Malta, performing with various theatre companies and founding her own theatre company Urbania in 2002. She currently lives in Brussels.

CV: https://www.miriamgalea.com/contact

Ruth Borg – Performer Biography

Ruth Borg was born on the rocky shores of Malta whose waters brought her to the North Sea, specifically to Amsterdam, where she now lives and works.  She is a performing artist and creator working within the fields of theatre, music, film and facilitation. She has performed in Malta and across Europe with artists and companies including Julian Hetzel, Davy Pieters, Zarah Bracht and Landmarks Collective. Ruth holds a B.A. (Hons) in Theatre Studies from the University of Malta and a B.A. in Mime from the Academy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam. She also a trained trauma-informed facilitator.

Loranne Vella (Aphroconfuso) – Collaborator Biography

One of the events will be in collaboration with literary journal Aphroconfuso (https://aphroconfuso.mt/). Loranne Vella will be relaunching her feminist book Marta Marta. A few of Aphroconfuso’s writers will participate in a poetry night centred on themes featured in the exhibition, namely feminist topics, masculinity, modern love and the female gaze. Aphroconfuso have introduced a lot of new, female voices to the local literary scene and act as a platform for under-represented narratives. It will also be the occasion of the publication of a second edition of the book Marta Marta by Loranne Vella, which ties into the themes of the exhibition. Loranne Vella is a Maltese writer, translator and performer based in Brussels. She has won the Malta National Book Council’s National Book Prize several times, including Best Novel in Maltese or English for Rokit and Marta Marta. She is co-editor of the Maltese-language literary journal Aphroconfuso.

CV: https://www.helamalta.com/writers/loranne-vella

Joe Gatt (Aphroconfuso) – Collaborator Biography

Joe Gatt twieled Malta. Studja l-MTADA u emigra lejn Londra bħala żagħżugħ. Għex għal għaxar snin Berlin u issa jgħix Brussell. L-istejjer tiegħu ġew ippubblikati f’Scintillas: New Maltese Writing 1 (Praspar Press 2021) u The London Magazine. Londra huwa ħadem fi rwoli editorjali ma’ Vogue, The Modern Review, u għal ħames snin kien l-editur ta’ GSpot Magazine. Kiteb għal diversi pubblikazzjonijiet, fosthom The Face, Dazed & Confused u The Guardian. Huwa l-kittieb ta’ newsletter joegattnet.substack.com u jmantni l-website tiegħu joegatt.net.

Nigel Baldacchino – Exhibition Design Consultant Biography

Nigel Baldacchino [b. 1989] is an artist and design architect based in Malta.

After exhibiting his photography work sporadically over the years, in 2021 Baldacchino co-founded the exhibition project ‘those eyes – these eyes – they fade‘ alongside photographer Bénédicte Blondeau & Anne Immelé as curator, inaugurating it with the first exhibition at Valletta Contemporary in 2022.

In 2023 he enrolled in LTP & was commissioned as chief exhibition designer for the first edition of maltabiennale.art (2024). In 2024 he was also part of the second edition of ‘those eyes – these eyes – they fade’ held at the Musée Des Beaux-Arts de Mulhouse, accompanied by photographers Raymond Meeks, Awoiska Van Der Molen, Bénédicte Blondeau & Bernard Plossu. In 2025, Baldacchino was invited for a month’s residency at the Datz Museum of Art, which resulted in his first solo exhibition Promise Litter. In 2026, he curated Jenia Fridlyand’s solo exhibition ‘Limits of Control‘, on the occasion of the publication of her latest book ‘Mango Season‘.

In 2019 Nigel published Soon Out Of Context (Unsolicited Press) featuring instances of his own poetry presented in dialogue with found images lifted from old, public domain publications. In 2021 he released his first solo album under his experimental ambient project ‘Pool Night’, with Belgian label ‘Complex Holiday’, titled ‘Everything Is Still Here‘. In 2026 he published his first photobook, titled The Only Distance.

22 October to 12 November, 2026

Art Galleries of the Malta Society of Arts,
Palazzo de La Salle,
219, Republic Street,
Valletta

Free