I am the body of a human. Andrew Birk at MCA

The impact between a primordial language and forms of representation of the unknown is well-stated in the exhibition I am the body of a human, a solo show by Andrew Birk currently at MCA – Malta Contemporary Art in Valletta, founded in 2008 by artist and curator Mark Mangion.

Andrew Birk, Life Shroud (Calderones), 2017, fixed soil on denim. I am the body of a human, MCA – Malta Contemporary Art, Valletta

Andrew Birk has been carrying on a research which has evolved over time. His work has strengthened through his experience, and the backward use of various contemporary, traditional and (now more than ever) ancestral techniques, along the lines of a figurative trajectory that retraces its steps in the opposite direction. It’s what we call fortuitous, lacking the intellectual realism identified by French philosopher Georges-Henri Luquet in his essay L’Art Primitif (1930).

Andrew Birk, Life Shroud (Chipicas II and III), 2017, fixed soil on denim. I am the body of a human, MCA – Malta Contemporary Art, Valletta

This condition creates a space of uncertainty that converges in our limits reading the past and imagining the future. In this digital age, there is a primigenial craving to going back to being hominids. This technological present overwhelms the memory of a protohistory. It’s another world: a heaped universe of images and symbols, so far away from our history that it becomes more than mysterious, arcane and impenetrable, like a shroud in which the image of a man remains imprinted. These are signs from a remote world, gathered by shamans, who can capture the allure of other dimensions, the secrets of art and representation. Whatever is enveloped in the mystery is a source of attraction.

Andrew Birk, Life Shroud (Chipicas II), 2017, fixed soil on denim. I am the body of a human, MCA – Malta Contemporary Art, Valletta

I am the body of a human being at the dawn of human history. Contemporary is seen as a return to an ancient and genuine form of worship, in which man is constantly in direct contact with the forces of nature and succeeds – as this contact is reinforced by magical practices – to influence the environment surrounding him in favor of his clan.

Andrew Birk, Life Shroud, 2017, fixed soil on denim. I am the body of a human, MCA – Malta Contemporary Art, Valletta

Andrew Birk’s exhibition is as intimate and down-to-earth as it may be, it’s the clear rite of passage. The ritual marks the change of an individual from one status to another. It concerns a change over the life cycle. Passages and footprints that are stylistically traceable in the work of an artist. Rites of passage aren’t something related only to primitive cultures, belonging to a distant past, or totally different from the Western ones. We also have a lot in our technocratic society.

Andrew Birk, Life Shroud, 2017, fixed soil on denim. I am the body of a human, MCA – Malta Contemporary Art, Valletta

The artist has reproduced the mold of his entire body, scattered of earthy pigments, which he then imprinted on a series of white denim canvases. And here is the ritual. We can consider these shrouds as “a self-referential declaration spoken from the voice both of a cyborg and a caveman: the condensed self-awareness of an existentialist being, a self-aware physical device, and a biological entity, all at once.”

Andrew Birk: I am the body of a human is at MCA – Malta Contemporary Art in Valletta, Malta through November 18, 2017