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THIS WEEK ART maltatoday | SUNDAY • 5 JANUARY 2020 4 TEODOR RELJIC speaks to Sara Dolfi Agostini, curator at the Blitz contemporary art space in Valletta, about the venue's currently-ongoing showcase of Tobias Zielony's works, whose title (Isn't Life Under the Sun Just a Dream) reveals the Malta-relevant layers of irony explored in the exhibition Capturing what slides in between Teodor Reljic First of all, could you tell us a little bit about how Blitz's collaboration with Tobias Zielony started, and what were some of the aspects of this current exhibition, Isn't Life Under the Sun Just a Dream, that you thought would be particularly relevant to Blitz as an art space? I have been aware of Tobias Zielo- ny's practice since 2009, when I first saw his breakthrough project Mani- toba at Frieze Art Fair in London. That work, focused on First Nation teenage gangs, was also the point of departure of the show at Blitz. Zielony takes aim at the formation of political subjectivity, and offers a glimpse into the yearnings of young people who normally don't make the news, from Winnipeg all the way to Napoli, Ramallah, Kyiv, and Nagoya. Their desires, hopes and fears sur- face in emotionally charged portraits, animations and videos, while he ex- plores the interstices between their private and public identities. In the foreground, there is the coming of age of a community and the place it inhabits in times of late capitalism, as a globalised consumer culture seems to offset a cracking social democratic political model. Malta is no exception with its booming economy and growing cul- tural contradictions, but it was after Zielony's participation to the Ven- ice Biennale – representing Germa- ny – that his interest grew. There, he presented The Citizen, partly on view at Blitz Valletta, a project about invisibility and the idea of reversing the typical travel pattern of media information in relation to the story of a group of migrant activists who crossed the Mediterranean Sea by boat to reach Germany and ended up in a reception centre near Berlin. After that experience, Zielony was willing to further investigate the sea, what lies beneath its romantic image when imbued with depth for the cas- ual onlooker. What are some of the ways in which the exhibition reflects the current Maltese political crisis, and what do you hope it can contribute to the ongoing conversation? It is important to note that Tobias Zielony was invited to Malta over a year ago and came multiple times, well before the abrupt explosion of the political crisis last November, after the dramatic breakthroughs in the Daphne Caruana Galizia mur- der investigation. So, while the new photographic portraits capturing a group of teenagers – party goers and breakdancers in collaboration with the Street Elements Hip Hop Artists – were shot between June and Sep- tember, the new video Hurd's Bank was in the making until the day be- fore the opening. This work captures hypnotic im- ages of ships relentlessly sailing be- tween Valletta's Grand Harbour and Hurd's Bank, a shallow stretch of sea just outside Malta's territorial waters and a major offshore anchoring area on the route between Europe and North Africa. The film is shot from the mainland with a telescopic lens which shows objects at a distance of several kilometres, yet the humidity does not allow for a clear view, sug- gesting the opacity of human history in connection to the sea. As the nar- rator toggles between media news of alleged corruption surrounding the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia – the bomb that killed her was deto- nated from the Grand Harbour – and existential questions embedding a wistful lyricism into hard facts, the darkness swallows everything except the distant quivering lights of the ships. Tobias Zielony's work is always a process, a journey into chance en- counters and unseen places. When- ever he cannot bring the invisible back into plain light, he still shows the struggle, and that is what he did in Malta. How would you say the exhibition reflects the work and ethos behind Blitz in a more general sense, and over 2019 in particular? At the beginning of 2019, Blitz launched a new curated programme dedicated to established internation- al artists whose work had never been seen in Malta before, but had critical- ly shaped and influenced the inter- national contemporary art dialogue of the past decade. We – director Alexandra Pace and I – also felt the need to do more than just shipping artworks to Malta. The art commu- nity needed conversations and inter- action, with a real public programme too. To do so, we only invited artists that were truly committed to Malta as a laboratory of sorts, engaging with its idiosyncratic history, culture, and social landscape as much as with the major challenges of our present society. Every show is the outcome of a unique interpretation of a place, and has been a very enriching experience for Blitz and its visitors, I dare to say unique. Tobias Zielony's solo show Isn't Life Under the Sun Just a Dream, for example, starts in the form of an enquiry – albeit without a question mark – and presents itself as an oxy- moron, since life under the sun refers to inescapable reality, itself the prod- uct of often unfulfilled dreams. In Malta, a year-round tourist desti- nation where visitors seek solace and evasion, the title also hints at com- plex stories and relationships that lie behind the veil of architecture, local Tobias Zielony's work on display at Blitz, Valletta. From left: Manitoba, The Citizen and new work shot in Malta Kalandia Kustom Kar Kommandos (Dream Lover) (2014)