Postmodern trends in Maltese contemporary art

Abstract

Malta, like the rest of the world, is experiencing several innovations in various sectors of the community. The mass media, a central feature of the postmodern world, has intensified to such extents as to reinvent itself with new formats, pushing forward new concepts of "reality" and ever increasing manifestations of simulation. Rapid technological developments have introduced new ideas and altered patterns of behaviour and language, and people now talk of new identities formed on fragmented role-playing. The term postmodemism refers to such conditions brought on by media convergence, altered states of production and consumption, globalisation, and a world economy based on the transactions of multi-national corporatons. Postmodemism however is a much wider theoretical discourse, a paradigm which spans diverse fields, and which purports a world view radically different to the one experienced in the Modem Age. This dissertation is assuming that these developments have invariably brought about changes in the way we see, in the way we think, and in the way we produce. Consequently the study aimed to explore if such changes in the social fabric have influenced the way Maltese artists think and create art. The study explores postmodem elements in instances in local contemporary art and discusses these in a wider social context. The study found a trend of using postmodem elements in art, but argues that they arc few and that the art docs not present an altered world view of fundamental cultural changes, neither in form nor in content. This thesis reinforces the view that there are experiments going on, but it is as if modernism has not ended.