Visions are seldom what they seem – A solo exhibition by Nicole Debono

Visions are seldom what they seem – A solo exhibition by Nicole Debono

Curated by Rachelle Bezzina

Dates: 12 March to 16 April 2026
Opening night: 12 March at 6:30pm
Venue: Art Galleries, Malta Society of Arts

This exhibition brings together a new body of paintings by Nicole Debono that explore the instability of memory, the politics of domestic space, and the tension between intimacy and fabrication.

At first glance, the works appear familiar: interior scenes, fragments of the body, gestures suspended in quiet rooms. Then, the domestic becomes charged, unsettled, and slightly uncanny.

Central to the exhibition is the idea of a room of one’s own, not simply as a private interior, but as a condition for artistic agency. Borrowing from Virginia Woolf’s argument that creative work requires material and spatial independence, Debono treats the painted room as something actively produced rather than passively remembered. The act of painting becomes an act of claiming space: deciding what enters the image, what is withheld, and how the viewer is positioned within it. In this sense, the room is not only subject matter but a declaration of autonomy. It asks who is permitted privacy, time, and authority to construct meaning, and what it means for an artist to build that space through her own terms.

Debono does not paint rooms as they were. The room is assembled through gesture and restraint. Through careful omission, cropping, and staging, the works create spaces where certainty dissolves, and recollection becomes active. Memory is displaced from the logic of the archive and (re)configured as (re)construction.

Drawing reflections on dwelling, gaze, and interiority, the exhibition considers how space shapes us, and how visions, in turn, shape our psychic landscape.

Nicole Debono – Artist Biography 

Nicole Debono (b. 1996, Malta) is a figurative painter who treats the domestic stage as a dig-site where private ritual intersects with collective myth. Her compositions are typically framed in tightly-cropped views of female protagonists and their possessions and surroundings, a process that lends everyday objects existential weight and prompts viewers to reconsider what seems familiar. Her process involves gathering a diverse array of visual references, which she curates and reconfigures to create layered, allegorical works that investigate the tensions between personal memory and shared cultural narratives. Her research moves between studio observation and study of symbolic imagery, psychology, historical art references and the human body in contemporary contexts. Her work oscillates between dualities: innocence and experience; agency and restraint; the personal and the universal.

Instagram: @nicsdebono
Facebook: Nicole Debono – https://www.facebook.com/nicsdebono
LinkedIn: Nicole Debono – https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicsdebono/
Substack: https://nicsdebono.substack.com/

Rachelle Bezzina – Curator Biography

Rachelle Bezzina is a Malta-based curator and writer whose practice interrogates interiority, feminist spatial politics, and the social conditions that shape private life. Her curatorial work approaches exhibition-making as a political act: a way of constructing space in which gendered expectations, inherited roles, and subtle systems of power are made visible and critically examined. She is particularly concerned with how domestic architecture, memory, and embodiment intersect, and how the interior operates as both lived experience and structural condition.

She has curated projects at Spazju Kreattiv, including Fil-Friġġ Wara t-Tadam (2024–26), the research-led debut solo exhibition of Lorella Castillo, and at the Mamo Tower, Marsaskala, where she curated The Heart Ticks Soft and Mild (2025), situating contemporary practice within historically charged heritage architectural sites. At Rosa Kwir, she curated Xewka f’Qalbi Xewka f’Sormi, marking ten years of the Women’s Rights Foundation and consolidating feminist and queer discourse within Malta’s independent art landscape.

Alongside her curatorial practice, Bezzina maintains an artistic and writing practice across theatre, screen, and live performance. She served as dramaturg on B’saħħtek, recipient of the Arts Council Malta 2023 Best Community Production Award, a devised community-based project developed with professionals from Dar Kenn għal Saħħtek. Her writing has been commissioned by Arts Council Malta for the Council of Europe’s World Democracy Day, reflecting her ongoing engagement with political discourse and public speech.

She is also the lyricist and vocalist of the interdisciplinary feminist punk project BRUDA, where language, performance, and abrasive sound operate as vehicles for political critique. Through punk and metal, BRUDA confronts systems that continue to marginalise women’s voices, extending Bezzina’s curatorial concerns into sonic and performative territories.

Bezzina completed an internship at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and is a Salzburg Global alumna.

For Visions Are Seldom What They Seem, Bezzina worked in close dialogue with Nicole Debono to refine the exhibition’s conceptual and spatial framework. Her curatorial approach protected the instability embedded in the paintings, structuring the show as a constructed field rather than a narrative sequence. Together, artist and curator shaped a project that treats the domestic not as backdrop, but as apparatus, a site where memory, gender, and power converge.

Instagram: @rea.malta

Facebook: Rachelle Bezzina – https://www.facebook.com/rachelle.deguara

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelle-deguara-42276a108/

Substack: https://rachellebezzina.substack.com/

12 March to 16 April 2026

Opening Night: 12 March at 6:30pm

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

Mondays to Fridays: 9am to 7pm
Saturdays: 9am to 1pm
Sundays & Public Holidays: Closed

Free