Raphael Vella: Places of Attention: Ruins of Reason, Roots of Renewal
10. 10. - 20. 11. 2025
curator: Lenka Sýkorová
The buildings of the Parliament are symbols of rationality, public governance, and trust in human reason. They embody the structures that uphold the ideals of democracy, progress, and social consensus. Yet today, we find ourselves in a time when these ideals are losing their original significance—not only politically, but also ecologically. In the space of the Altán Klamovka gallery, set within the natural surroundings of a park, Maltese artist Raphael Vella presents the exhibition Places of Attention: Ruins of Reason, Roots of Renewal, which addresses the end of a mode of governance in which we may have delayed action until the brink of collapse, while also searching for a new beginning.
The Gaia hypothesis becomes a source of inspiration, understanding the Earth as one interconnected, living, and self-regulating organism. This approach—referred to as Gaia politics—is not a utopia but a call to reconsider what we define as “government” or “responsibility.” It is no longer just about human management of nature, but about the co-agency of all forms of life in shaping the world we live in. In this spirit, the exhibition opens up space for the idea of zoocracy—a representative form of governance that includes all sentient beings. Against the backdrop of ecological collapse and crises in human administration, an image of a new “dawn” of zoocratic civilization is born, in which not only humans, but animals, plants, and the Earth itself as a living entity, have a voice.
At the heart of the exhibition is the drawing cycle The Natural Contract —three bed sheets, everyday objects that bear images of what was meant to be permanent: interiors of the Parliaments. The drawings are monochromatic, created with graphite and ink. The precision of the lines, along with their fragility, points to the very essence of political institutions—as if these human-made systems were disintegrating back into a pre-political phase, where natural order replaces authority. Vella’s ruins are not an end-state but a transitional moment—from the floors and walls sprout plants, trees, and roots, suggesting that something new can grow even out of decay. The drawings indicate a political shift, where the natural world is placed at the center of human ethics and governance. The transformation of human rationality, under the weight of criticism of the anthropocentric view of democracy, appears as a natural process of transition—a return to the earth, to nature, to the foundations of life. The cycle emphasizes drawing as a medium of reflection and resistance.
The accompanying video—an experimental animated film titled The Silent Darkness of Limitless Hope —was created during Vella’s stay in the Canary Islands. Natural footage of landscapes is overlaid with hand-drawn layers (fields, stains, and organic textures) resulting from the search for a new social order—one that does not exclude, but connects. These layers interact with film sequences, archival audio from an old American advertisement for the anthropocentric future, and artistic interventions that blur the boundaries between reality and imposed fiction.
Drawing here becomes the dominant visual language—a tool for visualizing ideas, political sensitivity, and relationship to the world. Vella’s approach is not descriptive but both analytical and intuitive. He captures a moment between decay and growth—a state in which it becomes possible to rewrite the social contract not on the basis of domination, but of coexistence.
The exhibition Places of Attention, curated by Lenka Sýkorová, offers a timely reflection on humanity’s relationship to the Earth, to power, and to the structures that shape our daily lives. It reminds us that even when everything seems to be falling apart, it is precisely in these moments that the roots of future renewal may emerge.
Lenka Sýkorová
Raphael Vella has been active as an artist, curator and researcher for many years and is currently. He is a Professor of Art Education and Socially Engaged Art at the Faculty of Education, University of Malta. As an artist his interdisciplinary work addresses political issues and sites of assembly, fields of practice and institutions associated with medicine, education and care. He uses a broad range of media, particularly drawing and experimental stop motion video. He has also curated art events in several art centres and public museums in Malta, and created the Valletta International Visual Arts festival in 2014. In 2017, he was co-curator of the Malta Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2017 and was selected to participate as an artist in the first edition of the Malta Biennale in Valletta in 2024. He has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and his books include Artist-Teachers in Context: International Dialogues (Sense, 2016), Art – Ethics – Education, co-edited with C.-P. Buschkühle and D. Atkinson (2020, Brill/Sense) and Documents of Socially Engaged Art, co-edited with M. Sarantou (2021, InSEA).