"IN ALTO MARE"
2023 Alberto Favaro
Modified world atlas
Exhibited at the
SOFIA PAPER
ART FEST 2024
"Without Borders"
Sofia, Bulgaria
Short Description
With In Alto Mare, a central contradiction of our time is confronted: while environmental threats demand collective responsibility and global cooperation, states remain obsessed with reinforcing territorial divisions. The work exposes the paradox of a world intent on drawing lines between nations while the sea itself—rising inexorably—washes over them all.
The world atlas, a symbol of geographic order and mastery, marks the starting point.Yet here, through an act of material subtraction, land is meticulously removed, leaving only a skeletal framework of borders suspended over blue. The result is a ghost map: a cartography of control rendered meaningless in a world dominated by water rather than land.
In this altered landscape, the obsession with safeguarding borders appears grotesque.
As coastlines vanish under rising tides, the fixation on exclusion and sovereignty seems both futile and destructive. In Alto Mare visualizes this dissonance: the geopolitical will to divide versus the ecological need to unite.
Created in Malta—an island at the crossroads of Mediterranean migration and climate vulnerability—the work carries particular resonance. Here, as in Protect Me, a gesture of violence is enacted on the object itself: the atlas is not redrawn but carved, undone.
Displayed alongside the ancient 1567 map Valetta Nova Città di Malta from MUŻA’s collection—depicting the city itself as a boundary—it highlights the persistent link between mapping and control.
Work displayed at :
-SOFIA PAPER
ART FEST 2024
"Without Borders"
Sofia, Bulgaria
.
-Alberto Favaro's solo exhibition
-PROTECT ME- at Muza (National Museum of Art), Valletta 2025.