Be the first to comment!Exhibition on Maritime Graffiti features Russian ship as seen on Citadel walls
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The José Herrera, Parliamentary Secretary for Culture and Local Government, has inaugurated an exhibition on Maritime Graffiti.
The Malta Maritime Museum exhibition on maritime graffiti in Malta will remain open until March 2014.
Scattered around Malta, graffiti are found on megalithic stones, medieval prisons, and on modern buildings such as wayside chapels, parish churches, public buildings and private homes.
On display is a graffiti of a Russian ship from the late 18th century, as seen on the walls of the cathedral at the Citadel, in Victoria, Gozo. Maltese sailors and corsairs were employed by Catherine the Great to fight in her wars against the Ottoman empire. She paid the Maltese corsairs in diamonds and gold coins.
Graffiti in their silence deliver a message. They emanate messages that transcend society, ideology and generations. From ancient Pompeian brothels to the ruins of the Berlin wall in post modern Europe, graffiti served a purpose of a permanent meaning.
In Malta, this phenomenon appears in the prehistoric temples of Tarxien, and their incidence is persistent throughout the ages to the present day. The importance of graffiti has only been recently acknowledged and they remain by and large a new facet of maritime ethnography. The more historians delve into this subject, the more we learn that this is a nationwide phenomena lost somewhere in time.
To document all the graffiti in Malta is impossible. The exhibition is based on the pioneering research work by the Museums Department former employee Joseph Muscat and his recent donation of various casts of ship graffiti to the museum.
A number of salvaged original graffiti will also be displayed, including a large ship graffito and legend dating to 1766 salvaged from a demolished residence in Zurrieq.
This is the latest of initiatives that Heritage Malta has accustomed the Maltese and foreign visitors to in its commitment to make our cultural heritage accessible to all.
