A solo exhibition by Nicole Debono, “Visions Are Seldom What They Seem,” is set to go on display at the Malta Society of Arts (MSA) Galleries.

The show brings together paintings and related object-based works to explore the instability of memory and the politics of domestic space, where intimacy can serve as both shelter and precarity.

Developed over a four-year period since Debono’s last solo show, “Lost in the Ether”, the exhibition revisits the home as a visual grammar: rooms, hands, bodies, objects. Yet, the domestic setting is far from benign; it is portrayed as a place where stories are rehearsed and revised, where meaning is managed, and where tenderness can shift into control.

“My work begins in lived experience, but it is driven by the urge to translate that experience so it can resonate beyond me,” Debono explains. She cites Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own as a conceptual anchor for the exhibition, recalling a 2024 trip to Bath where the line, “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” inspired her new body of work.

Working primarily in oil paint, Debono constructs compositions slowly and in layers. Starting with fragments from memory, photographs, rooms, textures and fabrics, her process evolves through drawing, collage-like planning, and repeated revision. “I work slowly and revise constantly,” she says, “letting the image lead before I try to contain it.”

Curator Rachelle Bezzina approached the exhibition as a spatial and conceptual proposition rather than a linear narrative, maintaining the paintings’ inherent instability while guiding visitors through shifts in scale, light, and psychological register.

“Debono’s work unfolds memory, space, and lived experience with quiet complexity, inviting viewers to pause and see the familiar afresh,” comments Roderick Camilleri, President of the Malta Society of Arts.

The exhibition will be on display until 16th April and is available for viewing for free from Monday to Friday between 9am and 7pm and on Saturday between 9am and 1pm.

For more information, visit www.artsmalta.org or Facebook.com/maltasocietyofarts.

Tag a friend to go to the exhibition with them