Artist presentation

Alexandra Pace

ALEXANDRA PACE is a Maltese photographer based in Valletta, Malta. She studied at Central Saint Martins University of the Arts London and is the founder and artistic director of the reference and longest running, independent, contemporary art space in Malta, Blitz Valletta. She photographs predominantly on analogue film and sees all images through to the final stages in her own darkroom. Alexandra is highly experienced in analogue photography and darkroom development, having embarked on her career as a photographer 25 years ago when digital cameras were just a dream. She works with Leica 35mm, Mamiya 6x7 and Hasselblad 6x6 cameras unless the situation specifically calls for the speed of a digital set up. She was the recipient of the European Eyes on Japan artist residency (2017) in Aomori Prefecture and the Contemporary Istanbul curatorial residency (2019). She was nominated for the MullenLowe NOVA Award for Fresh Creative Talent (2014) and The Shpilman International Prize for Excellence in Photography (2020). Pace’s work has been exhibited in Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles (2008), MADATAC Spain (2016), NRW Forum (2017), SKG Bridges Festival of Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (2019), Face With Tears of Joy at Blitz Valletta (2019) alongside artists such as Cory Arcangel, Simon Denny, Rob Pruitt and Amalia Ulman, and represented Blitz as an exhibiting artist at Paris Internationale (2021). Under her artistic direction, Blitz’s activities have been featured in some of the most relevant international media – Artforum, Folha de S.Paulo, Flash Art International, Mousse Magazine, Weltkunst, Sole 24 ORE, Artribune and Abitare.

Artist statement

Alexandra Pace’s work stems from a metalinguistic reflection on photography, film, new media and technology – a reflection that transcends language to identify the traps, loopholes and ambiguities of a visual space where the anarchic nature of dreams and consciousness challenges memory as much as present experience. Tuning Aby Warburg’s ideas on the emotional side of pictures to internet-conscious terms, she investigates images as both products encapsulated in a specific time and society, as well as intensively interactive, interchangeable, and incomplete elements for different epochs and generations. In her practice, still and moving images are constantly questioned as they intertwine with perception and nostalgia, fears and desires. Recent artworks conjure faces, objects and filmstrips to redirect our understanding of the paradigmatic nature of the photographic image, both an indexical trace of reality and a product of “more personal ends”, to quote the text of the 1967 exhibition New Documents at MoMA New York. Pace’s decision to employ photograms and traditional darkroom printing techniques is an attempt to overhaul virtuality and reconnect time and symbols to physical experience and modern history. Her striking black and white aesthetics and antiquated patina are reminders of what cannot yet be achieved with a fully digital process. The natural elements and anthropomorphic shapes featured in the compositions take the viewer inside out, back to our origins, where perception can operate representation or turn the world into a hallucination.