GROUND 99
Satellite Event of the Malta Biennale 2026
Ground 99 launches in Senglea (L-Isla) as a new platform for multidisciplinary installation, video, and performance art, responding directly to the Malta Biennale’s call to clean, clear, cut. Set within the historic urban fabric of the Three Cities, the project brings together international and Malta-based artists to address the environmental, ethical, and aesthetic noise shaping contemporary life.
Conceived as a space for discernment rather than spectacle, Ground 99 invites audiences to slow down and engage with works that confront globalisation, ecology, gender, identity, and the politics of visibility. Across installation, endurance performance, and rotating video programmes, images and gestures become tools for re-imagining how we inhabit an increasingly fragile world.
The exhibition unfolds across interconnected zones. Jacquard tapestries by Margret Eicher weave pop-culture imagery through historical technique, questioning cultural memory and mediated realities, while sculptural paintings by Luis Carrera-Maul recreate climate change on porcelain and canvas. Newly commissioned works by Duška Malešević and the duo Rachelle & Aaron Bezzina further activate the space through light, material, and spatial intervention.
At the core of the programme is Dramaturgy of Desire, a 72-hour-per-week endurance performance by Gabriel D. Doucet Donida that examines intimacy, vulnerability, and the pressures of perpetual visibility. Complementing this is a rotating video programme featuring works by Nina E. Schönefeld, Stefano Cagol, Tracey Moffatt, Bjørn Melhus, and Almagul Menlibayeva, addressing environmental and geopolitical realities through poetic, critical, and often unsettling narratives.
Together, the works at Ground 99 reflect on the contradictions of contemporary life – acknowledging both its unsettling beauty and its accumulated damage – while opening space to imagine how we might live otherwise.
Ground 99 takes place at 99 F. Azzopardi, Senglea (L-Isla), Malta, from 12 March to 16 May 2026. Opening weekend runs 12 – 14 March, 4 – 8pm, with the exhibition open Thursday to Saturday, 4 – 8pm thereafter. More information at www.ground99.com and @artground99.
