Exhibition Design
Commission by Bettina Hutschek for her solo exhibition “Maltese Confabulations”,
at BLITZ, Valletta, Malta,
Timber, glass, paint, lights
October 2014

Maltese Confabulations is a multidisciplinary exhibition by artist Bettina Hutschek hosted by BLITZ, Valletta. This show highlights the artist’s oeuvre by bringing together works from recent years. It arranges them around several recurrent motifs and topoi, such as mythology, storytelling, history and archeology. There is also a strong presence of Maltese heritage or ancient civilisations, including the theory that Malta was Atlantis. Fragments of Maltese reality are interwoven in the various narrations, forming the basis for artistic storytelling and presenting a body of work that is to be understood simultaneously, not chronologically.

Bettina Hutschek’s work explores the melding of layers of ‘truth’ and ‘fiction’, in order to question ‘reality’ and ‘history’ in an absurd and ironic, however mostly poetic way. Through different media, the exhibition brings together work in various art forms such as documentary film, essay-films, drawings, photographic series and sculpture.

The installation and performance-lecture Valletta will mix legendary, factual and fictitious elements of Valletta history into a new story, which was developed especially for this exhibition. The video Hubertus is a documentary portrait about the man Hubert, who is convinced that Malta was the core of the Atlantean Empire, while several other videos and photographic series bring contemporary architecture and prehistoric remains together, blurring boundaries whereby their story lines become entangled and complement one another.

Picture credits: Luis Rodriguez and Tom Van Malderen
Drawing credits: Tom Van Malderen