In Place. Where the Land Holds, investigates sites where acts of violence have occurred, returning to them after the event to examine how these locations persist within the present. The work focuses on how trauma is absorbed and held within the landscape, even when no visible evidence remains.
Developed through archival research, including newspaper reports, court documents, and conversations with individuals connected to the cases, the project identifies and revisits specific sites across Malta. The images adopt a restrained visual language, avoiding reconstruction or spectacle, and instead attend to the ordinary fabric of these environments.
Ethical considerations are central to the work. The photographs are not titled after victims, shifting the focus away from individual identification and towards the relationship between event and place. The camera operates as a quiet witness, engaging with absence, residue, and the indexical trace of what has occurred.
Presented at the Malta Biennale 2026, In Place forms part of an ongoing inquiry into landscape, memory, and the conditions under which images can hold, rather than represent, experiences of trauma. This work is exhibited at Muza, Valletta.
