Alexandra Pace lives undemandingly in a world that presents itself in a multitude of facets, surrounded not by a single truth, reality or possibility but rather a profusion of alternatives, all plausible; all bearing promise of parallel conviviality. This is manifest in the way she approaches her latest project – where a house is primed to take on a series of photographic images as its new tenants and where these same images, with their distinctive and decisive aesthetic seek to conform to walls that have known a former history, a differently lived experience.
No. 68, St Lucy Street or Triq Santa Lucia as we commonly know it in Valletta is a place where time stood still; a place where past, present and a promise of future memories all live simultaneously. This house seems to have been pre-destined to become the bearer of time’s significant surfaces of the art of memory that is photography. It uncannily bears the same number as the ideal temperature for developing black-and-white film, that is 68 degrees Fahrenheit and is also situated in a street named after the primary imperative phenomenon for the creation of photographs – Light (Lucy or Lucia is derived from the word luce, the Italian word for light). No. 68 has waited quietly for Alexandra to uncover this destiny, to patiently stitch together the fabric of such rich human stories. The presence of Alexandra’s grandparents who thirty years ago used to occupy the house is exposed through the simple restoration of these walls, which in turn have become the bearers of the realities brought to light through Alexandra’s own photography.
The artist has chosen to present us with four distinct photographic collections, studies which at face value testify to the technical bravura of the artist, but on deeper levels also carry layers of social and artistic comment of local and global reference. Alexandra is concerned with society at large, with all that is human, which she discovers through both the phenomenon of light, and also the lack of it – through shadow.
On the ground floor, we are presented with the collection entitled ‘Santa Marija’ – a series of lomographic images taken under water. This collection seems to encapsulate the concept of fish-eye photography in a literal fashion, where the viewer is presented with a fish’s vantage point and observes the locals on their day of assault of the beaches – a day of revelry that is surely dreaded by the aquatic vertebrate inhabitants of the shallow waters. The artist predicts such a situation and instead of shying away or joining in with the masses, teams up with the silent underwater community to observe and record the spectacle. One wonders the motive of such an action by our protagonist – is it as Vilém Flusser describes the instinctive action of the photographer that resembles the paleolithic hunter who lies in wait and stalks the tundra in search of the right moment to attack or is it on the other hand a more playful exercise where through the camera one aspires to get to know what our humble shallow-water dwellers feel like on such a dreaded feast? Alexandra here is letting us witness the Santa Marija rituals from an unusual underwater perspective, where the spectacle of swirling bodies of varying shapes and sizes more than make up for the absence of traditional fireworks displays.
Further up on the second floor the tone changes to a more serious one with three photographic collections that deal with the way light appropriates form, both human and material. The ‘Boutique’ collection is a peek into a shop-window that celebrates the western concept of female beauty. An assortment of truncated mannequins and female human form devoid of colour blur the boundaries between plastic and skin and hone our focus to the exemplary profiles that not only dictate the fashion industry but also shape our concept of what the ultimately sculpted woman should aspire to. This collection presents a modern-day dichotomy – on the one hand it reinforces the well-known sense of visual pleasure one experiences when exposed to the codified aesthetic of the perfect form and on the other it presents an unattainable reality to many who are either not blessed with such forms of beauty or who despite the age factor continuously try to fight the currents in search of such a flawless ideal. Alexandra here puts the question upfront. She places both mannequins and humans on equal platform as if to question – “are the mannequins that have been fashioned by human hands competing with the same humans who have created them? Are we therefore hostage to the same ideals we have created?”
The same rationale seems to be applied to another collection entitled ‘Soldier Boy’. Alexandra dips into the sketchbooks of the great masters to re-interpret the male equivalent of the archetype of strength, agility and grace under studio light arranged with surgical precision. In the same idiom as the ‘Boutique’ collection, ‘Soldier Boy’ presents the perfect aesthetic, this time the masculine. What I find intriguing in both collections are their well-chosen titles. Both ‘Boutique’ and ‘Soldier Boy’ point at an accepted and aspired to western form which only recognizes a specific type of body, a Hellenic ideal, a species that is young, well exercised and conforms to certain well-defined proportions. It seems as if Alexandra, who is accustomed to working with such perfect bodies in her commercial practice, is at the same time also questioning the glorification by the media of such hand-picked, idealised forms, through contrasting them with the random cross-section of bodies captured in the ‘Santa Marija’ collection on the ground floor.
The final collection in this exhibition is by no means the least. ‘Maggie’s Kitchen’ is dedicated to Alexandra’s mother Margaret and is a minimalist poetic exercise in shape and form. The artist bestows common vegetables with an absolute sculptural stature that belies their original size through the application of a pitch-black background and dramatic lighting.
Reminiscent of Elizabeth Arden’s iconic emblem, the red door leading to No. 68 Redprints invites viewers to the very personal world of Alexandra Pace, both lived through her childhood and created through her photography. One hopes that such a living proof of visual and artistic sensitivity being offered by one of our leading photographers is shared and enjoyed to the full by individuals eager for such experiences.
© VB 19-10-08
Vince Briffa is an artist, curator and researcher; lectures at the Centre for Communication Technology at the University of Malta and is also visiting artist in Contemporary Art Practice at Leeds University.
vbriffa@gmail.com