Water wears down the stone not by force, but by time. It brittles, what was once hard and invincible, bit by bit. So too does memory, when held openly. Here, grief is not fixed—it flows. It rejects the impulse to solidify mourning into statues or bronze plaques, and instead supports the philosophy of the living monument.

‘In Absentia’ takes the form of a generative, question-driven installation: a continuous reprocessing of archival material, media coverage, testimonies, and public records surrounding unresolved political violence in Malta.

It generates and displays an evolution of statements drawn up from fragments of information of several cases. The intention is to create an archive which survives as a vigil looping upon itself. The tide of processed text confronts viewers in a post-cataclysmic installation, creating of its own accord, a new archive.

Exhibited at R Gallery as part of TABLING EMOTION 24/07/2025:29/08:2025