Malta

Matthew Attard investigates the versatility of contemporary drawing, exploring its performative and time- based nature, generating intersections between the physical and digital realms. Attard shares the authorship of his art with an eye-tracker—an advanced scientific tool recently appropriated by corporate entities. To the artist, the eye-tracker is an extension of himself, offering a platform to explore the hybrid territory between humans and machines: a smart collaborator in the production of contemporary art.
In I Will Follow the Ship, he further intertwines digital drawing with historical imagery. The pavilion unfolds as an exploration of the legacy and meanings of ship graffiti, humble drawings and ex-voto motifs found on the façades of wayside chapels in Malta. The meanings of these anonymous ship drawings reverberate today, where computer technology and the Internet have propelled mass artistic emancipation and overturned traditional local centres of power. A parallel is thus drawn between these stone incisions and contemporary digital drawing. In the pavilion, the ships captivate the audience, enabling digital interaction and shared speculative thought. They metamorphose into symbols of hope and uncover concealed truths that lie beneath forecasts, emotions and convictions.