You Got to Burn to Shine

During the winter of 2022, I was entrusted with Samskara (burn no.4), a sculpture by Gozitan artist John Paul Azzopardi. For years, the piece had remained hidden, undisturbed and largely unseen. Yet over time, it seemed to gather a quiet intensity of its own. What had once been dormant began to feel charged its surface and presence carrying something deeper, something that drew together traces of the tribal, the mystical, and the fetishistic. Gradually, the work revealed itself not just as an object, but as a vessel of an obscure and unsettling energy.