NO NEED TO SPARKLE - EXPERIMENTS IN LOVE AND REVOLUTION
MALTA PAVILION AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 2026
No Need To Sparkle proposes an immersive and provocative space that invites us to question what we take for granted; about truth, identity, belief, and the world we inhabit.
​
The pavilion brings together three large-scale film installations that unfold as layered fictions and shifting realities. As each work evolves, familiar convictions and assumptions. Right and wrong, real and unreal, self and other - begin to dissolve. What remains is a space of uncertainty, where meaning is constantly renegotiated.
​
Imagined as both a surreal and political environment, No Need To Sparkle challenges fixed positions and binary thinking: green or greener, truth or fiction, the “right” side of the fence.
Instead, it proposes doubt as a productive force; an opening for dialogue, empathy, and collective reflection.
​
Representing Malta at the Venice Biennale 2026 are three of the country’s most accomplished contemporary artists: Adrian MM Abela, Charlie Cauchi, and Raphael Vella, under the curation of Margerita Pulè.
Through animation, AI technologies, and live-action film, the artists create a richly layered temporal and visual experience where beauty and unease coexist.
ARTISTS' & CURATOR
ADRIAN ABELA
​Adrian MM Abela is a Los Angeles-based artist whose practice unfolds through sculpture, poetry, and metaphor. Working with found materials and narrative structures, his work explores identity and perception, examining how memory, knowledge, and lived experience shape the paradoxes of selfhood over time.
RAPHAEL VELLA
Raphael Vella is a contemporary artist, curator, and academic whose practice spans drawing, installation, and stop-motion animation. With an extensive international exhibition record, he has also played a key role in shaping Malta's contemporary art landscape through curatorial projects, festivals, and academic work.
CHARLIE CAUCHI
Charlie Cauchi is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker based in Malta. Her work takes a deeply personal, biographical approach, using film to explore identity, representation, and familial narratives, often rooted in Maltese contexts.
​
​
MARGERITA PULÉ
Margerita Pulé is an independent curator, and the founder-director of Unfinished Artspace. Her work focuses on experimental, site-specific, and research-led curatorial practices, often operating outside traditional exhibition formats and engaging with critical, political, and feminist methodologies.