Malta International Contemporary Art Space (MICAS) recently launched a major solo exhibition by the internationally acclaimed African-American painter Reggie Burrows Hodges, marking the artist's first exhibition in Europe.
Entitled Mela, Hodges has plugged in to one of the Maltese language's most used and versatile of words - "mela" - as an evocative signifier of the 'Malteseness' he encountered throughout the creation of his body of work.
Hodges (b. 1965, Compton, California) in fact made Malta home in 2024 to create an entirely new body of work inspired by his experiences on the island, specifically engaging with its culture and history.
"Without making the journey to Malta and spending time immersing myself in the culture, I wouldn't have had a shot at its richness. That would have been a real loss - not for Malta, but for me," Hodges said of his exhibition.
Spanning over 30 new paintings across the MICAS's four main gallery floors, including the largest canvases of his career, Mela represents Hodges' most ambitious body of work to date.
The work includes a monumental painting created as an ode both formally and in scale to Caravaggio's The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, which was painted in Malta during Caravaggio's exile and remains the artist's largest and only signed work. Hodges responds to this historical precedent with a site-specific reinterpretation, filtered through his own visual language and contemporary concerns.
The exhibition is curated by Edith Devaney, Artistic Director of MICAS, and runs from 9 May to 30 August.
Known for his use of painting as a powerful form of visual storytelling and metaphor, Hodges sees "mela" as a term that often precedes the expression of a thought or idea. In Mela, Hodges extends his ongoing exploration of identity, memory, labour and collective experience, in fresh dialogue with the Maltese context.
Following the relocation of his studio to Valletta, Hodges immersed himself in Malta's social, historical and geographic landscape. His body of work is the result of his observations of the island's rugged coastline, bathers, scenes of agricultural and physical labour - all local Maltese histories embedded within Hodges' broader investigation of human dignity and endurance.
Edith Devaney, Artistic Director of MICAS and curator of the exhibition, commented: "It has been extraordinary to observe how Reggie immediately immersed himself in every aspect of Malta, allowing himself to become deeply receptive to the country and its people, and the extent to which he was able to translate these observations into a powerful and emotional body of work."
MICAS executive chairperson Phyllis Muscat said Mela forms part of MICAS's wider programme to explore cross-cultural exchange between artists and Malta.
"MICAS seeks to invite international artists to explore how our island's distinctive history and social fabric can act as a catalyst for new artistic production. We are elated to host Reggie Burrows Hodges, one of the most significant painters of his generation, with a new body of work that embraces his love for Malta."
Mela is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication, featuring a new essay by Edith Devaney, published by Skira Editore, a global leader in art publishing.
The works in Mela exemplify Hodges' distinctive painterly language: beginning with a layer of black paint, he allows figures and environments to emerge through negative space, shifting emphasis away from descriptive realism toward atmosphere, gesture and psychological presence.
This approach connects Mela to Hodges' wider practice, including his acclaimed paintings rooted in recollections of growing up in Compton, which foreground Black community and resilience, and draw inspiration from influences like David Driskell, Alex Katz and Milton Avery.
Apart from Hodges's site-specific reinterpretation of Caravaggio's Beheading... and his long-running 'Labor' series, Hodges has produced a group of Malta seascapes, reflecting his ongoing interest in the sea as a space of movement, migration and exchange. Reflecting on the people, landscapes and layered histories that shaped the project, Hodges has described Mela as "a poem to Malta".
Hodges has also programmed the MICAS external vault with a related music-based work, inspired by accounts of Neolithic music from past civilisations across Malta and Gozo. Drawing on recordings from these ancient sites, Hodges has developed a musical framework that transforms this material into a sensory experience.
About Reggie Burrows Hodges
Reggie Burrows Hodges's work has been presented in solo exhibitions at, among others, The Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York (2025); Karma, Los Angeles (2025, 2023); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2023-24); Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts (2023); the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, Maine (2021-22), Karma, New York (2021), and Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, Maine (2020, 2019). His work is held in the public collections of the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Institute of Chicago; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Dallas Museum of Art; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina; Portland Museum of Art, Maine; Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Tate Modern, London, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Born 1965 and raised in Compton, California, Reggie Burrows Hodges moved as a teenager to New York and Washington, DC. He attended the University of Kansas, where he studied in the theatre department, took coursework in African American studies, and played tennis on scholarship. He settled in New York after graduating, and focused on music, founding a reggae band, Trumystic, with which he toured from 1995 to 2010, and co-owning Bass Mind Recording Studio in Brooklyn. In addition, he worked as a professional tennis coach for the United States Tennis Association/International Tennis Federation Pro Circuit. He moved to Vermont in 2000 before settling in Maine in 2008.