MALTA DOORS: THE EXPERIENCE OF ART

The Malta Doors Series, a curated collection of photographs by Tarunima Sen was created at the beginning of her fondness for travel where her photography and art series became a reflection of personal ideas and learning, new initiatives, and passion for art.

The street photography series rendered an experience of craft, art classes, and exploration of people’s houses, studios, and tourist spots. Tarunima Sen toured the expanse of Malta and Prague with a friend, the owner of an art agency as well as a deep collector of art, and they found themselves in the company of artists who invited them to their studio spaces, at fine art courses as observers and mysterious places that spoke of the locales of Malta, its beauty and benevolent spirit. As the spot turned into a retreat for photographic art, her adoration for doors became an entire succession of graphics and graceful endeavour. 

The colourful doors of Malta are central attractions for the people that visit, with their lively limestones and beautiful hues created in stark contrast with adjoining walls. It was interesting for Sen to notice that their cultural and socio-political advantages engage with creating similar coloured doors to keep a monotone system and comparable schemes to Malta. Much like the traditional jharokas of India made in stone, the photographer found a juxtaposed effect created with the doors and windows (of wood and mire), similar in tone to the ones found in Jaipur, Goa, and Delhi’s Chandni Chowk Market.

Malta Doors, 2017, Print on Archival Paper, 40.6*61 cm

The governmental and administrative involvement in this artistic influx has been up for debate for many, though Sen took the example as a strong step towards nation-building and advancement with this instance of mergers. She photographed people’s houses as a metaphor intended for multiple moments as customary in the essence of the Maltese. The urban expanses of the Island, Maltese city, Valletta, the pastizzi, St. Julian’s, The Isle of Comino, The Notte Bianca Festival, street parties, and carnivals, and the rural scopes have a parallel trail and onlookers get a similar idea of the place in both divisions. 

Tarunima Sen’s reflection on Malta has called her to the place a number of times. The photographs are not mere replication; they create an echo of Malta with their colourful as well as a monochromatic kernel that parallelly speak of the beginnings of journeys, the doors that look into homes, studios, markets, and even empty spaces, commenting alternately on barren and full identities, just like people. 

Malta Doors, 2017, Print on Archival Paper, Square Form