Shipwrecks
In October 2014 I rented a beach house in south Sicily. My plan was to create a series of sea paintings.
Soon after my arrival, overnight, personal belongings were scattered across the beach, lots of them with arabic labels.
A little further away, a shipwreck protruded out of the ocean surface very near the beach.
At the port of the next village -Porto Palo- I saw abandoned wooden boats with arabic names.
These pictures had a significant impact on me, since I have a refugee background.
Back home I created large scale oil paintings of details I saw on the boats.
Thanks to the initiative of The Austrian Consul to Malta, Mr. Erik Drayman, and the financial help of the Austrian Embassy, I had an exhibition of this work in November 2015 in Valletta , which took place during The Valletta Summit of Migration .
Here is a short feature of the exhibition on a local TV Station, starting at 13:32 :
Link: https://youtu.be/8Ruf51yfKBo?t=13m32s
