“We no longer hold hands, but our phones never escape our grip,” Charlene Galea explains as we sit at the table. Blocks of concrete and brick sit on mismatched plates. ‘Ħela ta’ ħin, veru’ has been daubed onto one of the blocks.
Charlene had invited me into her sitting room (salott) as though she were entertaining a guest at a dinner party. Looking around, the set-up seems vaguely familiar; but it is far different from your typical Maltese living. You are immediately greeted by a mirror on which the words ‘I’m rubbish’ have been scrawled. The same motif appears on another wall. A television shows clips of people lounging on the beach. It feels warm and welcoming before it dawns on you that all the furniture and bric-a-brac in the room is actually rubbish collected from the streets of St Paul’s Bay. It is a stark reminder of all the things we throw out without a second thought.
Charlene is one of six students at the Department of Digital Arts within the University of Malta’s Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences who are holding an exhibition at the Spazju Kreattiv in Valletta. ‘Is-Salott’ is described as a multi-media installation and visitors are invited to explore the relationship between humans and the natural and digital environment.
Charlene explains while studying fashion in London and Barcelona, beaches and night life were often the subjects of her photography. On her return to Malta, she decided to read for a master’s degree in Digital Art but wanted to explore something completely out of her comfort zone.
“I took the opportunity to learn about something new and different. I began observing my surroundings – the open spaces in St Paul’s Bay – and the way people interacted with the environment. I started collecting junk left on the street, which I used to create this installation. I wanted to collect all that had been discarded and put it in one place. The ‘salott’ is comfortable; similar to the way technology comforts us. But it also numbs us to reality.”
Strolling around this unusual sitting room, it is easy to appreciate the creativity and peculiar beauty of rubbish as a form of comfort. Still, it is a grim reminder of the 21st century reality we have created for ourselves. We are constantly surrounded by noise, garbage and construction, yet no can no longer find solace in nature. Instead, we turn to our phones, thumbing through an endless scroll of social media perfection in a bid to escape our corrupt environment.
Charlene believes that it is not only the physical world we have become distant towards, but also the people around us. It has become completely normal to see friends, couples and even families seemingly more interested in their phones than actually engaging with one another. “People are more interested in the life they live on social media than in reality. What exactly are they searching for as they scroll through an endless stream of content?”
Framed collages around the room are another interesting element of Charlene’s installation. They depict scenes of people enjoying the beach while surrounded by cranes and construction. The images are both amusing and poignant, and that is how Charlene wants them to be. “To escape from the unpleasant sights and sounds of constant construction, people flock to the sea, but while enjoying that tiny bit of open space we have left, we are also turning our back on the land that is being exploited.”
Looking at the idyllic beaches, you can almost hear the head-splitting din of drilling and traffic in the background. But the images are neither surreal nor dystopian – they are our reality. “It’s the irony of contemporary life,” she says, “that we are constantly trying to escape our problems by going to the beach or losing ourselves in social media.”
Charlene says that her future projects will delve deeper into this digital reality. “It will be a performance about the many types of women online; the woman who prattles on about health and self-care; the one locked in an endless quest to take the perfect selfie; all the ways we constantly disengage from reality to please other.”
Charlene’s energy and quirky personality shines through as she continues to deliver ironic messages on so-called contemporary living, and I for one look forward to her future work.
