In A Place That Fades, Giola Cassar examines the disappearance of urban domestic green spaces and its cultural, psychological, and ecological repercussions. Gardens are presented as fragile, ephemeral refuges – archives of personal and collective memory – now vanishing under the pressures of urbanisation. This loss is not solely physical; it disrupts biodiversity, sensory experience, and systems of care.
Using acetone-transferred photography on fabric, Cassar underscores the impermanence of these spaces. The blurred, fading images mirror the instability of gardens within the urban landscape. By highlighting overlooked details – such as the texture of a single leaf – the work reclaims these vanishing sites as ecological and cultural records.
The exhibition explores the asymmetry of loss: while gardens may endure in human memory as nostalgic traces, for displaced species they disappear entirely. In the Maltese context, where rapid development continues to encroach on green spaces, the exhibition reflects on how this diminishment alters both human and non-human narratives of belonging, retreat, and survival.
A Place That Fades aims to prompt audiences to reflect on what it means to lose spaces of refuge and intimacy. It challenges viewers to reconsider their relationship with nature and memory in a time of accelerating ecological uncertainty.
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