The Malta Society of Arts is hosting two compelling new exhibitions at Palazzo de La Salle in Valletta. The upper galleries will welcome the works by artists Ruth Ancilleri and Sarah Maria Scicluna as part of Documents of Inheritance / Poetics of Desire, while a relatively new, exciting space – the Basement Vaults – will host clay works by Ioulia Chante, known as Babau Ceramics, as part of What’s Bugging You?

Documents of Inheritance/Poetics of Desire investigates how wild plants and weeds can be seen as inherited heirlooms from nature and become a symbol of our desire or yearning to go back to our more natural roots. The exhibition consists of 23 works by Sarah Maria Scicluna, who works mainly in silk screen printing and drawing through a digital approach, and 20 pencil drawings printed on transparent film and organza fabric by Ruth Ancilleri.

Scicluna explains that her starting point was researching endemic flora found in Malta growing wildly in urban areas: “I took long walks and observed what is growing around and in the pavement,” she explains. “I started to document these wild plants through photography, video and 3D scanning. These images were later broken down digitally, formed into compositions and translated into line work drawings, which were later plotted with a pen plotter.” Ancilleri, on the other hand, used a system where she transferred pencil drawings of these plants onto several transparent layers of paper or fabric, which she later merged into one artwork.