SOAP TO THINK WITH
2022
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SOAP TO THINK WITH is a solo exhibtion by artist Norbert Francis Attard – a show that will encompass a series of artworks that span two and a half years in the making, and which include a diversity of media and artistic disciplines. Its accompanying catalogue interrogates three driving themes, beginning from a universal and global perspective, threading through spheres of collective thought, and finally inviting individual analysis.
In his creation of three pillars of subject-matter, Attard builds work around humanity’s experience of the Covid-19 pandemic; the notion of political and financial corruption in Malta; and the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Each theme is catechised by Attard through works that link with canons of conceptual art, objet trouvé, light art, photography, sculpture, and graphic art. In his selection of subject-matter, Attard builds a retrospective comment around the wider and ongoing question of human ethics – his work grappling with the major traumas and moral dilemmas that have plagued communities both worldwide and locally in Malta. Their commentary addresses events that occured over substantial stretches of time and those that took place in the space of a moment.
The SOAP TO THINK WITH catalogue unravels the implications of these themes, unpacking the potenital of the series to mediate audiences’ reckoning with episodes that eternally mark the collective psyche. The catalogue’s essays offer philosophical, analytical, and contextual readings of Attard’s series, which consitutes one of his largest ever collections of work.
The catalogue chronicles the series and its themes, delving into the most urgent and lasting events and themes in recent history and working with the series itself as a contemplative edict on how human beings live today. Norbert Francis Attard’s series, SOAP TO THINK WITH, offers a capsule of reflection for Malta and beyond – a longform comment on the way humanity contends with the most complex moral trials of our time.
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