Lawrence Buttigieg's exhibition Sacred/Profane open at Valletta's Spazzju Kreattiv from 2 to 30 April is an intriguing project dealing with a taboo subject in Malta. The artist bravely decided to enter into a contentious and loaded debate on the position of the male artist vis-a-vis the representation of the female body in Western art. Feminist artists and scholars have addressed this problematic discussion for some decades now and have proposed new ways of picturing the nude female in relation to her audience. The debate heavily centres on the politics of voyeurism within the artist-subject-spectator triad.

For his PhD research project, Buttigieg introspectively tackled his own practice as a painter of the female body. He did this by producing a series of works in different formats that depicted women performing and exploring her own subjectivity whilst explicitly imparting their gaze to the viewer. The artist also made an undressed appearance showing his undetached involvement in the women's relationship with their public. His decision to insert himself, his body, into the woman-centred dialogue signalled an uninhibited self-reflexivity. It is obvious that Buttigieg investigated this relentless question because it so impacted his way of understanding his creative and intellectual life.

Rather than sticking to the conventional exhibition format of hanging paintings, Buttigieg conceived exciting modes of display integrally linked with the topic under investigation. He constructed large and small containers or boxes which housed the paintings showing fragmented views of the nudes and plaster casts of the artist's and women's bodies. Viewers had to open or enter the boxes to discover their contents. This participatory process required them to look closely and build intimate relationships with Buttigieg's art.

He referred to the boxes as reliquaries and tabernacles, and this point brings us to another interesting layer of Buttigieg's research. This is where the two title words - sacred and profane -  participate within the dialogue on gender and representation. The human body has been posed as both a sacred and profane subject in art and culture, depending on the context of its presentation. Buttigieg has explained the connection as follows; "While this kind of profane artefact acts as a receptacle for our bodies which are broken down and enshrined together with other objects, it constitutes part of an ongoing process whereby the relationship between myself and the female figure is metamorphosed, re-shaped, and re-visioned. The significance of these creations is meant to extend beyond their artefactual existence and become mediums through which I re-visit female sexuality and eroticism and assess them within a spiritual context."

By introducing spirituality into the debate on gender and sexuality in art, Buttigieg succeeded in providing a new angle from a secular perspective. Female sacred bodies are conventionally attributed to images of the Madonna, saints, and other divine figures who are clothed, sentimentalised, and innocent, yet nonetheless erotic.The spiritual aspect explored by Buttigieg deals with female empowerment. It is a recognition of woman in her natural form as being de facto divine (divinity to be here understood within a secular, or profane, capacity). The other turned into a transcendental being instead of a subjugated one. In Buttigieg's own words; "...my artefacts seek to give [women], as an embodiment of the true other, a trans-corporeal identity. Rather than seeking to exert control over the other, they provide a pious space wherein the self and the other are able to encounter each other in a manner that initiates an equitable relationship, unhindered by presumptive knowledge."

For many reasons, Buttigieg's project reminds me of Antoine Camilleri's incessant production of nude self-representations in which he would sometimes be accompanied by women. Camilleri understood women to be essential to creation (artistic and biological) and thus underlined the essential role of the female nude as a creative being.

The choice of exhibition period was both clever and audacious. Sacred/Profane opened in the days preceding Holy Week, a time replete with spectacular activities celebrating the country's Roman Catholic identity. We are accustomed to its abundant imagery which is distracting and theatrical. Buttigieg created a space within which the subjects of gender, cultural, and religious identity could be assessed on a primordial level in the midst of religious ritualistic performances. For a brief period, the upper exhibition rooms of Spazzju Kreattiv were transformed into a secular chapel for reflection and self-reflection.

The exhibition was inaugurated with a talk by Prof. Marsha Meskimmon, Buttigieg's doctoral supervisor from Loughborough University, a colleague of my own doctoral supervisor Dr. Julia Kelly. Prof. Meskimmon eruditely discussed her student's work and showed the ways in which his project contributed to feminist discourse. It would be interesting for local artists to respond to Buttigieg's excellent project for gender and sexuality to become topics of unrepressed public discourse.

 

Today is the last chance to experience Sacred/Profane at Spazzju Kreattiv. The exhibition was curated by Prof. Gloria Lauri Lucente.