From Caravaggio to Korea: Malta’s artists break out of the baroque

A Mediterranean island meets Korea

Malta is stepping onto the global art stage this autumn with a pavilion at the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea, running from 5 September to 15 November. Titled BEJN / In-Between, the pavilion is led by French artist Julien Vinet as artistic director and brings together three Maltese voices: visual artist Norbert Francis Attard, the collective Ponks, and sound artist Michael Quinton.

The project is built around three linked installations that draw parallels between Malta and Korea. Attard’s spatial installation references Malta’s festa traditions — the vibrant village feasts that mark the island’s Catholic calendar — and Korea’s Obangsaek, the traditional five-color system. Ponks is constructing what it calls the ‘Rope Temple’, a five-kilometre web of rope interwoven with poetry by more than 140 Maltese and Korean writers. The concept draws on Malta’s maritime heritage and Korean geumjul, sacred ropes used in rituals and ceremonies. Quinton, meanwhile, combines field recordings from Malta and Korea to create a soundscape for the ‘Base Polygon’, an installation that forms the third element of the pavilion.

For Vinet, the pavilion is an extension of the curiosity that defines his work. He describes a fascination with “obsolete beauty” and with liminal spaces — the in-between moments that give the pavilion its name. That sense of in-betweenness is also central to Malta itself, a small Mediterranean archipelago that has absorbed centuries of outside influences, from Phoenician boats to British crests, with a language that is the only Semitic tongue written in the Latin alphabet.

A new creative latitude

Vinet moved to Malta about a decade ago after eight years in Japan. He works with Sam Alekksandra, a Maltese journalist turned poet; together they form the collective Ponks. Their practice began with little more than a microphone and a poster, hosting pop-up poetry events in a shared studio in Malta’s Three Cities. Those gatherings have grown to attract more than 100 people who regularly turn up to listen and share their work.

For Vinet, Malta has offered time and space to pursue both sides of himself — “the punk and the perfectionist,” as he puts it. For Alekksandra, the island has given her a reference point to develop her own artistic language. Poetry, she says, became a way to express emotions after the 2017 assassination of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. The emotional charge of that work was echoed in Korea, where a reading by an older Korean poet moved her to tears — even though she could not understand the words.

That kind of creative freedom, Vinet and others suggest, is relatively new to Malta. For years, artists had few galleries and even fewer pathways to show their work. The establishment of new institutions, including the Malta Biennale — which held its second edition this spring — and spaces like Valletta Contemporary, has begun to change that, giving Maltese artists an international platform and a growing profile.

Beyond the baroque

Malta is often associated with its baroque heritage — the Caravaggio paintings, the ornate churches, the fortifications of Valletta. But the artists at the Gwangju pavilion represent a move toward the contemporary, engaging with global conversations while rooting their work in Maltese traditions. Attard’s use of festa motifs, Ponks’ participatory rope-and-poetry structure, and Quinton’s soundscape all point to a scene that is increasingly outward-looking.

Quinton brings an unusual background to the project: he draws on his training in exosolar science to convert data from outer space into sound, adding a cosmic layer to the pavilion’s meditation on connection and place.

For the artists, the pavilion is also an opportunity to reflect on what Malta and Korea share — a resonance that goes beyond geography. As Vinet puts it, the project is about finding meaning in the spaces between cultures, between tradition and innovation, between the local and the international.

With the Gwangju Biennale running until mid-November, visitors will have the chance to experience this Maltese-Korean dialogue firsthand. Whether the pavilion marks a lasting shift in Malta’s artistic identity remains to be seen, but for now, the island’s artists are clearly looking beyond the baroque.