MIJA U TMENIN is our proposal for the competition launched by Arts council Malta for an installation at London Design biennale 2025. Together with a great team of artists, we developed and submitted our concept; following the set theme of ‘surface reflections’.

The Maltese archipelago, including Malta, Gozo and Comino is 180km long: MIJA U TMENIN -translates to ‘180’. The visual integrated with the title displays 180 km of wavering coast unravelling into a 180 degree straight reflecting plane. The coast as a reflection of who we are.

The coast, integral to our identity as islanders provides the agency for play, which activates our inner child. Due to Malta’s scale, one could argue that the entirety of Malta could count as coast, but we are here threading the line where land meets sea.

As we interact with the coast; it is being transformed through personal, fleeting and more permanent ways- leading to the development of the coast over time. In a fleeting manner through ephemeral shade and more permanent ways such as the construction of a boathouses, such additions lead to more of the same accretions along the coast. A simple action of one person can trickle into a collective pool of events.

As we transform the places around us, we are simultaneously transforming our self and the way another can experience the same place.

Up till the last century activities also transcended and delved into the idea of making. Fishing net traps, make-shift tents using cane and fabric. This was a way how adults could tap into making as childlike play. Adults need to be reconnected with such childlike whimsy.

During our childhood, play serves as an element through which we experience personal growth. Hence, play becomes a foundational element at our ‘essence’ of being. It becomes ingrained in the very fabric of who we are, shaping our understanding of the world and ourselves. As we grow older, our focus shifts away from play onto other traits of life. Nevertheless, despite all these changes, play remains a key part of our identity. In the same way that a well that doesn't lose its clarity with each draw, this element of childlike whimsy and play remains unaltered by the passage of time. It remains undistorted and alive with each and every visit we carry out as we get older.

The proposal sees this narrative translated as a series of undulating lightweight net fabric hovering over the room through a kinetic mobile system; as a metaphor to the physical and emotional space along the coast and literal reference to the net traps and fabric as shade. As a visitor walks by and touches the fabric, its form will shift.

One person’s action would determine how another user will be able to experience the installation at that point. Tapping into the loop of cause, effect and constant transformation. Being able to manipulate the immediate space, users would be able to transform the place to reflect their immediate self and desires, tapping into ones ego. This enacts the idea of play through bodily conduct. A visitor can decide to participate in this transformation, touch, coax, walk by or lay over the sand bags below the hovering net, being idle and absorb the space, as one does by the coast.