/library/oar/handle/123456789/20306 Tue, 23 Dec 2025 18:59:56 GMT 2025-12-23T18:59:56Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/121604 Title: About our contributors [Antae Journal, 4(2-3)] Abstract: Short biographies of the contributors in this issue. Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT /library/oar/handle/123456789/121604 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/121603 Title: Standard history/marginal history : comments on the narrative of twentieth-century Maltese art Authors: Petroni, Nikki Abstract: It is a common though not wholly unjustified misconception that Maltese twentieth-century art is backwards, anachronistic, and a softcopy of the Western avant-garde. The art of this period indeed resisted radical or even subtle modernist, aesthetic, and political developments, and there are seminal instances of direct engagement with the modernist project that lack an adequate discourse. Not only is such art hardly visible in the public sphere, but it has, furthermore, been historically undermined by an avoidance of critical and theoretical scrutiny. Studying art and its textual representation incited the realisation that the epistemological foundations of art-historical literature on Maltese modern art were debilitated by inconsistencies, passive narrative approaches, and, most perplexingly, unsatisfactory deductions posed as conclusive answers. Frankly, much material is repetitive and disengaged because of habitual preferences for biographical readings, prohibiting a thorough and contextualised understanding of images which could not be textually translated with the existing discourse. Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT /library/oar/handle/123456789/121603 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/121602 Title: Magic, poetry, and production : a conversation with Jesmond Vassallo Authors: Caruana, Christine Abstract: Stepping into the studio, the fragrance emanating from a dark solution being swirled in a container provides a warm welcome. Jesmond Vassallo now pours this concoction into a funnel covered with filter paper. There is a moment of hesitation as he selects, from the array of pots and tins in front of him, the container best-suited for the job. The small group of visitors—students of conservation studies—huddle around the table and observe attentively. One might be forgiven for mistaking this with some sort of ceremony, because in some ways it is: Vassallo is making ink. Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT /library/oar/handle/123456789/121602 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z /library/oar/handle/123456789/121601 Title: Light a tie up Authors: Steed, Karen Elizabeth Abstract: It is Friday night in April and I am in my kitchen, attending to last minute details on a spring supper of asparagus, lamb and strawberries, when the house is filled with the sound of glorious singing from the church across the road. All during the day, people across the islands of Malta and Gozo have been braving the patchy weather to walk the streets behind a church procession bearing aloft a statue of the Virgin Mary. This is id-Duluri, the day of Our Lady of Sorrows, the Friday before Palm Sunday, and the start of the saddest week in the Christian calendar, known as Holy Week. I’m not sure what they are singing in the church; it is a kind of melodic recitation, and it turns out that some parishes have decided against taking an old, and often precious statue of the Virgin out of doors into the rain and opted to say the rosary in the church instead. I grew up in a house without a bible, but the story is a bit more complicated, as family history often is. My mother was raised a Catholic and my adoptive father came from a mix of Irish and Scottish ancestors, all steeped in the tradition of the soap-scrubbed, finger-pointing, guilt-mongering Protestant church, or at least, that’s how it was described to me. The agreement in our house was that religion was not to be discussed as it might lead to bloodshed, or worse. But we still had Easter eggs, and chocolate bunnies, and indeed, I am planning to give my dinner guests chocolate eggs with coffee tonight. But why? Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT /library/oar/handle/123456789/121601 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z