Flow from Gozo

Some moments from last night… as visitors took and unraveled the birds to discover the migrants within. Today is the last day of the exhibition at Teatru Astra from 9-1.

There are still some birds left. You are invited to take them and research them at home.

Instructions on the back of the paper.

Keep watching this page ❤️

📸 Reuben Balzan

Tomorrow! Teatru Astra @ 8pm.

Men, women, boys, families...several migrated from Gozo in the early 20th c. Tomorrow you will discover them.

Who knows what happened to this earnest looking Gozitan boy? Can we harness the power of technology to give him a voice once again? To flesh out his memory.

Saturday 21st May Teatru Astra
Everyone is welcome

On Saturday night at Teatru Astra meet this young man and more than 300 other migrants, who left Gozo a hundred years ago. Things will happen that night. This is just the beginning.

Teatru Astra, 21st May, 8pm
No bookings required. Everyone is welcome.
Gozitans should not miss this event.

And the exhibition has launched at Teatru Astra! Pls visit the exhibition and meet the Gozitan migrants that I found at the National Archives. Each bird installed in the auditorium (over 300!!) contains a different, unique, passport application of a Gozitan from a hundred years ago. The birds are placed in the direction of the destination of each migrant on the actual compass...the largest flow is to Australia and France.

‘You die twice. The first when you stop breathing, the second when your name is spoken for the last time.’
(Jewish saying, popularized by Banksy)

This art installation is all about reviving memory, historic documents, chance finds, coincidence. It lies at the intersection of art and history. Its medium is paper and archives, audience engagement and this page.

Opening tonight at Teatru Astra. Can’t wait.

Flow from Gozo – an art installation by Francesca Balzan
Gozo. Teatru Astra. May 2022.
Alternative perspectives Exhibition, curated by Mark Sagona

Step 5: The install! Two whole back breaking days of installing my art piece ‘Flow from Gozo’ 😅

Exhibition launches on Saturday evening! Do come visit!

For your diaries…21st May when something really special happens 😬😉

Flow from Gozo – an art installation by Francesca Balzan
Gozo. Teatru Astra. May 2022.
Alternative perspectives Exhibition, curated by Mark Sagona

Step 4: set up the page of Flow from Gozo. As this art project crowd sources research, this page is the virtual gathering spot! It will be the place where the research is exchanged. More on that later…..

Flow from Gozo – an art installation by Francesca Balzan
Gozo. Teatru Astra. May 2022.
Alternative perspectives Exhibition, curated by Mark Sagona





https://www.instagram.com/franbalzansculpture/

Step 3: Having found my 315 Gozitans in the passport applications, I resized every passport application scan into a square format and printed out each one of these 315 passport applications on A4 paper which I then trimmed down to a square shape and folded into an origami dove. At the back of each passport application are instructions that I'll tell you about eventually 😉😉

I separated the birds according to the destination of the migrant they ‘contained’. The Australia and France batches were the most numerous.

Flow from Gozo – an art installation by Francesca Balzan
Gozo. Teatru Astra. May 2022.
Alternative perspectives Exhibition, curated by Mark Sagona





https://www.instagram.com/franbalzansculpture/

About the project 'Flow from Gozo':

Step 2: Having decided to work with the auditorium and specifically that sea of red chairs, I decided to revisit the passport applications held at the National Archives of Malta. I remember seeing several applications by young Gozitans intending to migrate a hundred years ago. Gozo has always suffered from waves of depopulation. The 1551 Sack of Gozo remains the most catastrophic and complete depopulation of the island, however before and well after that people repeatedly left or were forced to leave their birth island with negative consequences on the overall development of the island.

It was time to return to the Archives to go through thousands of applications from the 1920s. I calculated I needed a sample of around 300 persons who left Gozo. My father, a Gozitan himself, but also a Gozitan who had ‘migrated’ to Malta, helped me in the various research sessions which we commenced at the beginning of January. I scanned every application we happened to find of persons born in Gozo. By the final session we had found 315 Gozitan men, women and family applications.

Flow from Gozo – an art installation by Francesca Balzan
Gozo. Teatru Astra. May 2022.
Alternative perspectives Exhibition, curated by Mark Sagona





https://www.instagram.com/franbalzansculpture/