Clean, Clear, Cut: The 2026 Malta Biennial

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DATE

10 Apr 2026

AUTHOR

Laurinda Branquinho

Clean, Clear, Cut: The 2026 Malta Biennial

AUTHOR

Laurinda Branquinho

The 2026 Malta Biennial, now in its second edition, strives to establish the country as a platform for contemporary artistic dialogue, able to articulate local and international practices and consolidate its position within the global art circuit. This edition’s conceptual framework, under the artistic direction of curator Rosa Martinez, is structured around a sequence of gestures—Clean, Clear, Cut—that call for an urgent transformation of contemporary conditions: ending environmental, ethical, and aesthetic pollution; discerning and understanding; and breaking away to open new paths.

To understand the Biennale, one must grasp the country’s historical and contemporary context. Malta is a territory whose history is marked by successive occupations: from the Phoenicians, Romans, and Arabs, to the Order of St. John, and later to British rule, under which it became a colony in 1800 and only achieved independence in 1964; processes that have profoundly shaped the country’s language, culture, architecture, and political structure. Nowadays, this historical heritage coexists with contemporary dynamics marked by the rapid growth of tourism¹ and real estate speculation.² Landscape reconfiguration raises questions about sustainability—specifically, the capacity of an island territory with limited space to withstand intense construction activity—about urban and cultural identity, insofar as architectural homogenization tends to dilute local characteristics—and about access to the territory, particularly concerning housing and residents’ use of public spaces.³ As such, the Malta Biennale bears an increased responsibility for how these tensions are interpreted and discussed. Expectations are that it should act as a mediator, shed light on complex relationships surrounding heritage, provide a space to analyze contemporary tensions, and invite the public to participate and engage.

Its structure is organized around three main axes: the international exhibition, the national pavilions, and the thematic pavilions. A particularly significant aspect of its structure is the use of historic sites—palaces, fortresses, museums, temples—as active elements in the construction of meaning, where artistic projects engage directly with the historical, political, and symbolic layers that run through them. Rosa Martinez is the curator responsible for the international exhibition that spans the islands—from Malta to Gozo—and the pavilions have other associated curators, including Katya Micallef, Ada Piekarska, Eszter Csillag, and Natalia Bradbury.

I began my visit in Valletta, the capital of Malta, a fortified city with a Renaissance-style urban layout that has earned it a place on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Entering the historic center, it’s impossible to miss the large banner bearing the inscription “Justice for Jean Paul Sofia,” in memory of the 20-year-old worker who was killed in 2022 when a building under construction collapsed.⁴ The piece introduces a necessary element of noise, restoring the weight of the present to the historical space, and ultimately marked the beginning of my journey through the Biennial.

At the National Museum of Archaeology—which houses a collection of prehistoric artifacts that tell the ancestral history of the Maltese islands—I came across the work of João Marques, a young Portuguese artist, who has an entire room dedicated to his installation Neste país sem olhos e sem boca (2024–2025). This work is based on the collection of soil affected by fires, typically from places familiar to the artist. The process involves scraping away the topmost layers of soil—recently scorched—and spreading it over rectangular panels installed parallel to the viewer’s body. Charred earth—with its twigs, stones, leaves, and roots—is lifted from the ground, and its story laid out before the viewer. In this movement, we are asked to look closely and carefully at what lives beneath us, what defines the territory and sustains life, and what, every year when temperatures rise, endures the great tragedy of wildfires.

This was also where I saw the first of the nine works by Italian artist Concetta Modica, which I would encounter throughout my visit to the Biennial. Each sculpture in the series Nine Nights of Malta: the journey of a tomato sepal to become a Star (2025) is based on a tomato sepal; cast in metal and placed on a blue terracotta surface, alluding to a starry sky. Each piece is linked to a specific night, understood as a moment when something—however small—altered the course of history. This piece is labelled “August 5, 1608—the night Caravaggio completed The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist for the Oratory of St. John’s Co-Cathedral,” a reference to Caravaggio’s passage through Malta, where he painted his greatest work, still on display today in the very place where it was conceived. Formally, these are small works that blend discreetly into the collections of each museum. As we encounter them, they begin to serve as landmarks in the history of Malta, delicately connecting the different spaces of the Biennial.

At MUZA – The National Community Art Museum, the Malta Pavilion, Wonderland: Kaos Kontemporanju, features works by Ġulja Holland, Pierre Portelli, Roderick Camilleri, Victor Agius, and Vince Briffa. Drawing inspiration from Lewis Carroll’s book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the pavilion invites visitors on a journey into a universe where the very notion of progress is called into question. I would like to highlight here the artists Pierre Portelli and Ġulja Holland, who, through different media, incisively address issues of the Anthropocene. In The Triumph of Time, Pierre Portelli presents a series of championship belts adorned with symbolic objects—such as fake nails and eyelashes, syringes, or flowers—questioning mortality, aging, and surveillance. On the other hand, Ġulja Holland, with her painting Through the Looking Glass and the use of mirrors, places humans and gorillas face to face, prompting a reflection on observation, power, and interspecies relations.

While still in Valletta, I visit the Grand Master’s Palace, a palace that embodies centuries of power, having served during the British colonial period and also as the seat of Malta’s first constitutional parliament in 1921. In the Biennale context, the work The Economy of Power Pays the Price (2018–ongoing) by the Egyptian artist Mohamed Ibrahim Elmasry, which addressed precisely these questions of power, ultimately did not make it to Malta due to the war in the Middle East, leaving signage in the palace cloister that highlights this absence and the geopolitical circumstances that caused it.

Inside the palace, I come across Vasco Araújo's Carne Vale (2026), a highly detailed sculpture modeled from plasticine that takes the form of an 18th-century carnival float, offering a critical reinterpretation of the history of the Maltese Carnival. As we approach the work, the scent of modeling clay floods our senses, transporting us back to childhood. But what we see is a composition bringing together knights of the Order of St. John, folk dancers, and civilians—all male figures dressed in women’s attire—in a euphoric celebration; or figures with pig heads and butchers, intertwining the sacred and the profane. Based on historical references and using a childlike medium, the work ironically questions institutional, social, and gender power relations.

Finally, the biggest surprise at the Grand Master’s Palace was Lara Nickel’s installation 12 Horses – Homage to Jannis Kounellis (2018), housed in the former stables. Drawing inspiration from Jannis Kounellis’s work Untitled (12 horses)—in which, in 1969, he placed twelve live horses inside a gallery in Rome—Nickel revisits this gesture by replacing the animals with twelve life-size paintings, arranged on the floor perpendicular to the stable walls, as if they were physically occupying the space. This configuration compels us to move among canvases, revealing both the images and the backs of the paintings, thereby activating their three-dimensionality. The installation is further enhanced by being exhibited in the palace’s former stables, which function as a conceptual extension of the work, reinforcing the tension between past and present, real animal and image, presence and representation. Nickel turns the painting into a body that occupies the space, breaking down the usual distance between image and viewer, forcing us to physically traverse and pass through it. The piece also highlights the often-invisible conditions that an artist’s participation in a Biennial entails. Shipping a dozen large-scale paintings involved high costs and significant logistical challenges, leading the artist (who currently lives in Mexico) to seek external funding and crowdfunding to make her participation in the Biennial possible⁵.

At Fort St. Elmo, where many of the national pavilions can be found, the Polish pavilion, Archive of Hesitations, stands out; it features an audiovisual installation by artist Weronika Zalewska. It starts with the use of the television game-show format—which became widespread after 1989, particularly during Poland’s transition to a liberal democracy—where participants from different social classes attempt to answer questions correctly within rules that are seemingly objective but unstable. The use of English, which they do not fully master, exposes the pressure to adapt to a Western model, but as the game progresses, flaws and ambiguities emerge that reveal the limits of this system. Participants are asked questions such as, “What do we feel in a shopping mall?”, “Who feels safe in the free-market economy?”, or “Is the presence of Polish troops in the Middle East after September 11 justified?”. On the other video channel, images of gestures and details of daily life—from the touch of handling a loom—are shown, constructing a nonlinear, slow, and sensitive narrative. Through these images, meaning gradually emerges from the interplay of memory, experience, and direct observation—in contrast to the speed and pressure of the game we saw earlier. The pavilion thus suggests uncertainty and lived experience as essential tools for the production of knowledge.

The next day, I traveled to the Isle of Gozo. Here, nature plays a more prominent role in daily life, making it a refuge for many Maltese seeking to escape the urban pace. At the Ġgantija Archaeological Park, the installation BLANK (2026) by Maltese artist Therese Debono blends seamlessly into the landscape. Facing the prehistoric temples—among the oldest in the world—Debono presents a large-scale photograph of a windowless white wall. This gesture highlights the rupture between ancestral heritage and contemporary forms of construction that interrupt and block our view of the landscape. The site was recently at the center of a controversy following the approval of a building project near the Ġgantija Temples without a heritage impact assessment. The permit was subsequently revoked because it affected a UNESCO-protected area, but the dispute continues⁶.

Back in Malta, at the Inquisitor’s Palace—a historic building once home to the Roman Inquisition, which ruled Malta for over 224 years, where visitors can still see old courtrooms, chambers, and torture devices—the works on display engage in a dialogue with the site’s history, exploring ideological repression and forbidden knowledge. This is where I saw the film A Night We Held Between (2024), by Palestinian artist Noor Abed, which centers on a recording of the song Song for The Fighters, drawn from the sound archive of the Popular Art Center in Ramallah, dedicated to preserving traditional Palestinian songs and sounds. Starting with the voice of an elderly woman singing, the work traverses layers of sound and space that transform history into a continuous present, intertwining ritual, resistance, and daily life to reflect the power of collective memory.

At Fort St. Angelo, Salvatore Arancio presents Their Eyes Have No Lids (2019), an audiovisual installation that documents the nuns’ work in preserving the axolotl and the achoque, amphibians at risk of extinction in Mexico. Arancio enters monastic spaces to document the nuns’ daily routine caring for the animal, a process that intertwines spirituality and biological conservation. The installation consists of two videos and various stuffed animals and sculptures of the creature, unfolding different forms of representation. The work is a poetic and sensitive reflection on animal and human life, on care and ecology.

The last place I visited was the Birgu Old Armoury of the Knights of Malta, which houses several themed pavilions, including Bullets of Flower, an installation by Ukrainian artist Maria Kulikovska that confronts us with the reality of the current war in Ukraine. The artist pays homage to what she learned from her grandmother in Crimea, such as the use of medicinal plants for healing, and incorporates this tool for survival into her artistic practice. The medicinal herbs are embedded in bullets, transforming an object of violence into an instrument of care and healing. The composition includes various female bodies and fragments, lying on the floor or suspended by chains, their translucency revealing the roses sprouting from within.

Over the course of three days spent walking through all these venues, the question that kept coming to mind was: who does the Biennial benefit? Despite its small scale and the fact that it is only in its second edition, it has managed to establish itself on the global contemporary art scene through the relevance of the themes it explores, the diversity of artists and media, and its less predictable curatorial choices, while also championing emerging or underrepresented artists. Cases such as that of artist João Marques, who is taking part through an open call, demonstrate that there is, in fact, an effort to broaden access to participation.

However, this openness does not seem to translate into accessibility for the general public. And this is where Rosa Martinez’s statement “Art is political, even when it tries to hide it”⁷ comes into play. If the Biennial fails to develop consistent mechanisms for engaging with and involving residents, schools, and local artists, its impact will tend to be limited to an audience already familiar with contemporary art.

The political dimension of art is not limited to the issues that the works address; it is also manifested in the conditions of access that the Biennial itself creates. When an event of this nature takes place within a country’s historical heritage, this responsibility becomes even more evident; therefore, it is expected that there will be access policies in place so that residents can effectively enjoy the program. And this is where the Malta Biennale, despite the many positive signs, still has room for improvement.

The Biennale is open until May 29, 2026.

Umbigo travelled to Malta at the invitation of the Malta Biennale.

¹ Times of Malta. “Editorial: Tourism Growth Comes at a Price.” Times of Malta, 21 Jan. 2025, https://timesofmalta.com/article/editorial-tourism-growth-comes-price.1103930

² Times of Malta. “Editorial: The Housing Affordability Crunch.” Times of Malta, 17 Feb. 2026, https://timesofmalta.com/article/housing-affordability-crunch.1124152

³ “Tourism in Valletta: Have We Gone Too Far?” THINK Magazine, 27 Jan. 2020, https://thinkmagazine.mt/tourism-in-valletta-have-we-gone-too-far/

⁴ The public demand for justice centers on holding those responsible for the accident accountable, as the public report confirmed that there was a systemic failure on the part of the Maltese government, since no authority was overseeing the building that collapsed.

⁵ Eddy, Jordan. ““I’ll Be in Debt”: What It Takes for Artists to Show at International Biennials.” Southwest Contemporary, 10 Mar. 2026, https://southwestcontemporary.com/cost-of-international-biennials-artists/

⁶ Camilleri, Ivan. “Revoked Ġgantija Buffer Zone Flats Permit to Be Issued Again - the Shift News.” TSN, 9 Mar. 2026, https://theshiftnews.com/2026/03/09/revoked-ggantija-buffer-zone-flats-permit-to-be-issued-again/#google_vignette

⁷Statement by Rosa Martinez to the press, March 11, 2026, at the opening of the Malta Biennial.

⁸ On the Biennial’s official website, the ticket option available is a €35 combo ticket, advertised as valid for one entry to each of the venues included in the exhibition circuit. The only documented way to receive free admission is through the Heritage Malta Membership—an annual pass that grants unlimited entry to sites managed by Heritage Malta, which costs €50. Free admission for residents is only available upon prior purchase of an annual membership.

BIOGRAPHY

Laurinda Branquinho (Portimão, 1996) has a degree in Multimedia Art - Audiovisuals from the Faculty of Fine Arts of Universidade de Lisboa. She did an internship in the Lisbon Municipal Archive Video Library, where she collaborated with the project TRAÇA in the digitization of family videos in film format. She recently finished her postgraduate degree in Art Curatorship at NOVA/FCSH, where she was part of the collective of curators responsible for the exhibition “Na margem da paisagem vem o mundo” and began collaborating with the Umbigo magazine.

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