Pierre Huyghe’s work Exomind (Deep Water) was unveiled in 2019 during the MICAS International Art Weekend in collaboration with the Serpentine Galleries of London, and was situated in Wied il-Luq, Buskett Gardens.

Situated within the dynamic ecosystem of Wied il-Luq was the cast of a sculpture of a blinded, crouching, female figure. Its head was obscured by a hive, home to a colony of Buckfast bees that were in a constant process of building and extending its structure.

As a sculpture that included a living beehive, this set of exchanges with the flora and fauna that surround it made Exomind a work that lied between the continuity of living interconnected systems and separation.

The growth of the hive was made possible as part of the process of pollination of flowers in the area, so its constant modification became a visible expression of the entanglement of one form with hundreds, if not thousands of others.

Understanding, communication and knowledge, all symbolically contained in the brain, here became an “exo-mind” in endless formation, with the elements left to themselves to determine, or not, their own organisation and potential evolution.

Born in Paris in 1962 and based in New York, Pierre Huyghe works on situations that are often based on speculative models. The environments he creates are complex systems in which interdependent agents, biotic and abiotic, real and symbolic, are self-organising, co-evolving in a dynamic and unstable mesh.

Cristina Iglesias’s ‘Sea Cave (Entrance)’

The exciting Sea Cave (Entrance) by the Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias in 2020 is located at Hastings Gardens in Valletta but will eventually be relocated to MICAS.

The complex layering of cultural traces and memory permeating the Marsamxett harbourscape, St Michael’s bastion and Hastings Gardens became the dramatic backdrop to Sea Cave (Entrance) – an imaginary opening to a subterranean space exploring hidden geologies, interconnections, and the passage of time.

The bronze bas-relief work, eloquently articulated in Iglesias’s distinctive sculptural language, creates a profound and immersive sculptural environment, through a reflective engagement with public space.

Sea Cave (Entrance) hints at a liminal threshold – the potential entrance to a cave – with the sculptural form delving downwards to expose stratified layers and an imagined pitted and hollowed geology. The smoother, upper overhangs contrast with the underlying layers, bringing to mind shoreline caves formed and eroded by sea. Water, moving in slow or faster sequences, becomes the unifying element of the work as it seeks to catalyse perceptual engagement, and an open invitation for an immersive contemplative experience.

Cristina Iglesias was born in San Sebastián, Spain in 1956 and currently lives and works in Madrid. Throughout her career, Iglesias has defined a unique sculptural vocabulary, building immersive and experiential environments that reference and unite architecture, literature and culturally site-specific influences.

The Palm Goddess for Malta, portrait by Anders Overgaard

In 2022, MICAS hosted the internationally celebrated Michele Oka Doner whose The Palm Goddess for Malta embraced the figurative tradition of the ancient past with a sculpture inspired from the monumental leaves of Phoenix dactylifera, a palm that inhabits the Maltese archipelago.

Celebrate the human form in ancient Malta has been celebrated as world patrimony since the dawn of art’s historical reference. The use of the figure even predates the building of stone temples, so primary is the human form to the culture of the island. 

The abstract but definitely female form is a four-metre high, soaring figure held aloft on a “trunk” that symbolises growth from the Maltese soil. Just as the vast majority of archaeological finds represent a deity, something sacred, The Palm Goddess for Malta embodies human aspiration and the desire to be lifted up and moved forward by creative expression.

Cast in bronze and patinated green, its palm motif provided Valletta’s parliament square a beautiful and timeless image.

Michele Oka Doner is an internationally renowned artist whose career spans five decades. Born and raised in Miami, she maintains a studio and residence in Soho, New York.

The Dappled Light of the Sun (Formation 1)

The celebrated British artist Conrad Shawcross (b.1977) was one of the first artists to visit Malta as a guest of MICAS, immediately connecting with the history and geography of Malta, finding inspiration in the location of the MICAS site, its history, proximity to the sea and the marina, and the views it afforded from its high areas.

In 2023, MICAS worked closely with Shawcross to curate a display of his works across the MICAS site, which is now in the final stages of construction.

The Dappled Light of the Sun (Formation I), acquired by MICAS as part of its permanent collection, is constructed in welded weathered steel Made in 2015 and first shown in London, it was originally exhibited as a set of five unique clouds arranged as a vast canopy in the courtyard of the Royal Academy of Arts. These other companion pieces are now all in international collections.

The sculpture is comprised of a large, floating, cloud-like structure, which is formed from thousands of bolted tetrahedrons propped nimbly on a set of three tripods. With a height of nearly five metres, its monumental scale enables the sculpture to be immersive, encouraging viewers to walk beneath and around it, experiencing the changing patterns created by dappled light passing through the complex, geometric canopy. The work embodies the artist’s deep fascination with mathematical theory, as well as his engagement with the natural world.

[

MICAS Beacons, by Conrad Shawcross

MICAS Beacons, 2023 is a new ambitious site-specific triptych placed on the ancient historic battlements of La Vittoria Bastion. Standing at a height of seven and a half metres, each mast supports a pair of counter-rotating semaphoric disks, each with a diameter of nearly four metres.

These monumental and structurally complex sculptures, fabricated in stainless and galvanised steel, appear at first to be some kind of military device or early warning system, but they also express the playfulness of a child’s toy. Shawcross visited the MICAS site over a number of years and found the island a great inspiration.

The three devices overlook the Marsamxett Harbour, and in keeping with their naval location and its rich maritime history, Shawcross has purposefully placed the works alongside, and in relation to, some of the remaining elements from past defensive weaponry.

The artist’s fascination with movement and engineering is revealed in these ambitious works. An inbuilt mechanical system powers the counter-rotation of the semaphoric optic discs. Like a stained-glass window, the disks are activated by the light of the sun and sky, which is filtered through a pattern of hundreds of thousands of non-repeating holes. The playful, bright colours use maritime flags that reveal a message through semaphoric code, which will be visible across the bay and far out at sea. Akin to coastal early warning systems, the three disks spell out the word NOW – a precursor for what is unfolding within the new MICAS site.

Slow Arc within a Cube (I, VI, VII, XI, XIII, XIV), Patterns of Absence, Limit of Everything and Paradigm Vex (Slender) is a group of related works displayed in the barrel vaults at the base of the battlement walls, where MICAS Beacons are located. Installed in a reverse chronological order, this is the largest display of these related light works by Shawcross to date, and they reveal the experimental approach the artist takes to exploring concepts such as time, space, and human perception.

The vaulted spaces where this series of works is displayed have been designated for artist-in-residency spaces in the next phase of the MICAS site development.