CAVE OF DARKNESS
PORT OF NO RETURN
58th Venice Biennale, 2019
Cave of Darkness - Port of No Return, proposes a re-imagined multilayered narrative of ancient creatures and long lost civilizations, exploring entrapment concealed with a have. Loosely drawing on animal remains and artefacts excavated in a cave in Malta the work seeks to make (up) histories, to fabricate facts and to blur the boundaries between actuality and imagination, real and semblance.
Cave of Darkness - Port of No Return, bone, clay, wood, stone, cast resin, photopolymer resin, copper, cork, shells, fossils, 58th Venice Biennale, 2019
Cave of Darkness - Port of No Return, photo David Levene, 2019
Cave of Darkness - Port of No Return, photo Sebio Aquilina, 2019
Cave of Darkness - Port of No Return, photo Sebio Aquilina, 2019
In this site-specific work meticulously researched, ambivalent remains of unfamiliar creatures and peculiar artefacts re-emerge to expose new layers of meaning. The visitor is invited to a mystical journey of surprise and self inquiry navigating through the prehistoric layers of Malta in the footsteps of its earliest inhabitants. The work concerns displacement narrated through non-taxonomic collecting approaches and constructed actualities.
“Maybe Borg’s partly fictitious project does in some way save something of the past for us, with which we can comfort ourselves. He maybe provides us with some sort of anchoring point, something solid in terms of which we can orientate ourselves.”
- Diane Morgan, Maleth/Haven/Port, Cave of Darkness - Port of No Return (2019, p. 99).
Cave of Darkness - Port of No Return, photo David Levene, 2019
Cave of Darkness - Port of No Return, photo Sebio Aquilina, 2019
Cave of Darkness - Port of No Return, photo Sebio Aquilina, 2019
Cave of Darkness - Port of No Return, photo David Levene, 2019
Cave of Darkness - Port of No Return, photo Sebio Aquilina, 2019