The Web
This work was installed in a public space, St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity in Malta. The cobweb references prostitution and clients weaved into a cobweb of flimsy red lingeree. Societies' underbelly is highlighted in an entangled world of fragility and entrapment. The question arises - who is the captive?
"...Avoiding the issue definitely does not form part of Scicluna’s programme of work. His way of doing things involves working within the problem rather than around it. It’s a bit like saying that the most effective way of understanding crime is to inhabit a criminal underworld, to live and breathe it on a daily basis. In one of the earliest pieces he installed in public, for instance, Scicluna created a huge spider’s web made entirely of flimsy red lingerie and spanned it across a vault at St James Cavalier in Valletta. The reference to prostitution in the work kept away from a straightforward representation of prostitutes (the history of art is replete with painted prostitutes, so why paint another?); instead, Scicluna entered the prostitute’s world by weaving her best selling device into a giant metaphor of her slavery to the world of sold sex. The medium is the message..."
Dr Raphael Vella
