Miriam Galea’s Għadajjar Għajnejja: Ebbs and Flows

What remains when an image refuses to settle? In Miriam Galea’s Għadajjar Għajnejja: Ebbs and Flows, looking becomes an exercise in uncertainty. Pale blue washes dissolve into flashes of fluorescent pink, while marks emerge tentatively, only to recede into the surrounding space. Nothing quite holds still and nothing entirely disappears. Rather than offering images to be deciphered, Galea invites us to consider the limits of seeing itself.  What makes something visible and what might be lost when we insist on giving it a definitive form?

Supported by Arts Council Malta and sponsored by the Farsons Foundation, this solo exhibition marks an important development in Galea’s artistic practice.  Following her illustrated books Ors (2024) and Ġewwieni/Innards (2025), she moves into the gallery space, extending her exploration of absence, presence and the barely perceptible through a more formal visual language.  Her delicate brushstrokes and restrained palette suggest images in the process of materialising, yet always on the verge of disappearing.

There is, however, more to this apparent fragility than an aesthetic fascination with the ephemeral. Galea’s attraction to the barely visible is also an act of recognition, perhaps even defiance. She is drawn to what is routinely overlooked: quieter existences, marginalised entities, underdogs and narratives that rarely command attention. By questioning the expectation that things must be completed, she challenges a culture that equates value with visibility, productivity and resolution. Her economical, impressionistic language offers just enough information without over-explaining, creating a sense of non-finito that leaves room for the spectator’s imagination.

Water provides the conceptual and visual foundation for this investigation. Transparent yet elusive, it resists permanent form while reflecting and obscuring its surroundings. Galea uses these contradictions to explore the difficulty of making the intangible visible. She describes how a free-flowing gesture is subsequently outlined, effectively freezing it before it evaporates. This becomes an analogy for our attempts to impose order on reality: in seeking to capture and understand something, we risk destroying the very essence we wish to preserve. Galea consequently oscillates between analytical control and expressive freedom, the latter finding particular expression in her Vie Liquide series.

Miriam Galea

This tension extends into the intimate territory of motherhood and the female body, where liquidity becomes a metaphor for embodiment, transformation and vulnerability. The body emerges not as a self-contained entity but as a site of continuity and change. Beyond the personal, Galea draws on Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of liquid modernity to consider the instability of contemporary life.  Her isolated figures, wandering through barren landscapes in search of connection, embody this condition.  Suspended between solitude and belonging, they reflect a society offering unprecedented opportunities for communication while often leaving individuals profoundly disconnected.

Another dimension emerges through Galea’s relationship with Malta and her experience of living in Brussels.  Describing Malta as an island often invisible on maps, she reflects on how Maltese people sometimes undervalue their identity, seeking recognition elsewhere. Distance, however, has given her a renewed perspective and confidence in acknowledging her origins. This resonates with her wider artistic pursuit of giving value to what remains unseen. Making the barely visible present thus becomes an assertion of identity as much as an artistic gesture.

Ultimately, Galea does not prescribe how her work should be interpreted. She hopes it communicates something sensorially, without requiring explanation, leaving viewers with a sense of mystery and a quieter yet defiant presence. This refusal to resolve meaning is perhaps the exhibition’s most distinctive quality. Its ambiguity is not an absence of intention, but an invitation to embrace uncertainty.

This exhibition reminds us that not everything meaningful needs to be fully exposed, defined or completed. Sometimes, the faintest trace carries the greatest weight. By giving space to what is overlooked and allowing the unresolved to retain its mystery, Galea proposes a different way of seeing: one that values attentiveness over certainty and presence over spectacle.

Għadajjar Għajnejja: Ebbs and Flows will be on display until 12 November 2026 at the Malta Society of Arts, Palazzo de La Salle, Valletta. Opening hours are Monday to Friday, 9:00 am to 7:00 pm and Saturday, 9:00 am to 1:00 pm. The exhibition catalogue launch and finissage will take place on 11 November at 7:00 pm, featuring a discussion with Raphael Vella, followed by a sound performance by Kurt Buttigieg.