Cunning diplomacy
In the Bible, Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan River, met John, and received his baptism, and when Jesus came up from the water, the sky suddenly opened up, and a dove flew down on John as if instructed by God, and John was named "St. John the Baptist." In desperation, st. John, who was upright, offended the Jewish king. When Salome, the daughter of the King of Judea, received a reward from her father and claimed to want the head of St. John, the King of Judea, under the pretext of killing St. John, sent someone to kill St. John the Baptist and put his head on a plate and gave it to Salome.....
The "St. John the Baptist" in this biblical story is a subject often depicted in Western art. In 1608, the Italian painter Michelangelo Merrisi da Caravaggio painted the first St. John the Baptist in Malta, entitled St. John the Baptist, the Beheaded, the only work he signed and the largest single altarpiece ever painted by Caravaggio.
The Malta Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 creatively reimagined Caravaggio's seminal altarpiece, St. John the Baptist, as a crossover sculptural installation and named it "The Diplomatic Wrist" (Di).
Through the use of sensing technology, this dynamic artwork summons droplets of molten steel to fall from overhead into the pool, then hiss and disappear into the darkness, creating a visual and physical impact for those experiencing contemporary atrocities. Create an immersive biblical narrative-covered present moment for visitors.
From ideological to metaphysical references, from 1608 to 2022, the Malta Arts Council designed the sculptural installation Diplomazija astuta for the 2022 Art Biennale.
Curated by Keith Sciberras and Jeffrey Uslip, the installation repositions Caravaggio's artwork St. John the Baptist in modern life. In a dark, mysterious atmosphere, the viewer is prompted to travel through a space where the tragedy of a biblical execution is being experienced.
This dynamic installation echoes droplets of steel falling from the building above into seven basins of water, each representing a theme in Decapitation. Upon contact with the water, the bright orange embers hissed, cooled, and disappeared into the shadows.
To complement this memorable space, musician Brian Schembri composed a hymn that rhythmically follows the time and frequency of each drop, while artist Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci creates a formidable sculptural ciphertext at the incision of the installation itself, embedding fascinating knowledge into the work.
Through artistic representation of the language of contemporary sculpture, artists seek to resonate with today's world events that reveal human failure. Deception, media manipulation and the weaponization of ideas, embodied in the form of steel melting, embodies the present era; In other words, humanity's capacity to self-destruct is simply to create new room for development.
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About the salamander
Beijing Salamander Culture Development Co., Ltd. is a cultural and creative company that "takes creativity and quality as the core, provides a variety of creative solutions and landing solutions, and realizes the overall landing of performing arts projects". Founded in 2012, the company has been deeply engaged in visual creativity and diversified artistic presentation for more than ten years, and has been involved in large-scale live performances, stage plays, film and television, video variety shows and other entertainment fields. Participated in the design and production of large-scale literary and artistic performance projects such as "Opening and Closing Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games" and "National Day Gala for the 55th Anniversary of the Founding of the People's Republic of China"; leading and participating in the creation of works including large-scale live performances "12.12 Xi'an Incident", "Luzhen Social Drama", "Gui Xiu", drama "Four Worlds Together", "Green Snake", musical "Song of Movies", "Gone with the Wind", opera "Ring of the Nibelungen", reality show "Knowledge is Power", "Inheritance of China", etc., bringing nearly a thousand forms of diversity to the audience. An infectious work of art. In 2020, Salamander and the China Musical Theatre Association cooperated to establish the Cultural Tourism Performing Arts Creation R&D Center of the China Musical Theatre Association, hoping to make due contributions to the performing arts industry and the performance consumer market while continuously pursuing and creating highly artistic and ornamental performing arts projects, and discussing the breakthrough of the drama consumption and performance mode in China's performance industry. As the company's official new media platform, "Salamander Vision" aims to create a professional, forward-looking and creative interactive platform to disseminate the company's works, share industry dynamics, and introduce outstanding artists and stage cases at home and abroad. Under the love and publicity of fans, it has now become a social media account with great influence and attention in the domestic stage art industry.
(Image from the Internet)
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