Cracks of Narratives
Performance | Charlene Galea
Charlene Galea speaks about Cracks of Narratives, her ongoing performance art project unfolding across countries, years, and formats. Rooted in her experience of leaving Malta at nineteen and living in London for over a decade, the work explores migration, labour, survival, and home as embodied conditions rather than linear stories.
Cracks of Narratives is an ongoing performance art project developed across different places, times, and formats. The project looks back at my experience of leaving Malta at the age of nineteen in 2004 and living in London until 2016, focusing on how ideas of home, migration, labour, and survival are carried through the body rather than through linear storytelling. The way the project unfolds—through fragments, repetitions, shifts in attention, and multiple sites—is inseparable from my neurodiverse way of making performance, where meaning emerges through process, duration, and embodied association rather than fixed narrative structure.
The project has developed through a series of distinct works, each responding to a specific location and phase of the research. In Malta, Cracks of Narratives began with the image-maker Timecapsule Tapes, a photo-performance series that functions as the image-making foundation of the project. These works explored questions of origin, departure, and attachment through objects, images, and bodily presence, establishing a visual language grounded in accumulation and fragmentation. This research later developed into a live performance titled I Run: running, presented at Kaktus Bar in December 2025. The performance used repetition, breath, and spoken text to reflect a body in constant motion—running through work, nightlife, relationships, and exhaustion—mirroring cycles of hyper-focus, urgency, and depletion.
In London, where much of this lived experience originally took place, the project continues through an upcoming chapter titled Say Thank You, scheduled for February 2026 at Outhouse Gallery and various streets I will revisit. This chapter is supported by People and Skin. The work takes the form of a durational writing and walking performance using till-roll paper as a non-transactional surface for writing. The action moves through streets, workplaces, clubs, rented rooms, and everyday routes that once formed part of my lived reality. Writing unfolds as an act of attention and acknowledgment, addressing people and places that were previously passed through without pause.
In Bologna, Cracks of Narratives is currently being further developed through my ongoing performance training, supported by the Arts Council Malta. This phase focuses on processing the material through sustained embodied practice rather than solely through public presentation. The resulting work, titled 24 Hr Body, will be presented at the end of the training programme in May 2026. The performance centres on endurance, repetition, and the body as an archive shaped by cycles of work, rest, and survival. Here, time becomes a compositional tool, allowing physical patterns, fatigue, and persistence to surface without being edited into narrative coherence.
The project’s final international iteration will take place in Venice during a summer intensive learning programme at Venice Performance Art at the end of June 2026, which includes a public showing. Presented under the title Leftover in the Now, this phase focuses on care, attention, and what remains in the body after prolonged engagement with autobiographical material.
Following the completion of these individual chapters, my intention is to bring Cracks of Narratives together in Malta towards the end of 2026. Rather than presenting the works separately, I aim to develop a multi-layered, hybrid project that allows performance, images, text, and durational elements to coexist. This final phase seeks to create a space where others can move inside these cracks, encountering the project through layered time, repetition, and embodied presence—offering an entry into ways of experiencing and making meaning shaped by neurodiverse processes.
Upcoming chapters:
Say Thank You — London, 26 February – 1 March 2026 (performance on 28 February)
24 Hr Body — Anfibia Dance Programme, final presentation May 2026 (supported by Arts Council Malta)
Leftover in the Now — Venice Performance Art Summer School, dates to be confirmed, beginning July 2026
Social media:
Follow @charlenegaleaprojects
https://www.instagram.com/charlenegaleaprojects
London event link:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DTqSeBwCGPM/
