Malta Pavilion 2026: No Need To Sparkle

NO NEED TO SPARKLE: Experiments in Love and Revolution About Working across varied film media, as well as drawing, sculpture, and mixed-media techniques, artists Adrian MM Abela, Charlie Cauchi, and Raphael Vella create three film-based works which coalesce into a space of questioning, reflection, and illusion. Guided by a philosophy of 'doubting well', the pavilion attempts to counter the certainty of political rhetoric and the extremes in which the world finds itself. That is, not a paralysis leading to inaction, but rather a call to action, and a vital act of resistance. The artists, in dialogue with curator Margerita Pulè, parse our actual and fictional presents, by anchoring themselves in manifold pasts, and imaginable futures. Their installations draw from varied sources, including archival material, cinematic works, popular culture, and historic and spiritual texts, while the pavilion’s title - No Need to Sparkle - references Virginia Woolf’s 1929 novel A Room of One’s Own. Straddling mythology, cinematic illusion, identity and political and spiritual resistance, the artists simultaneously decontextualise historical material and dismantle belief systems. The pavilion thus becomes a space that challenges truth, verges on the hallucinatory, and gradually becomes a space for embracing uncertainty. Read more Toggle Installation