WENS: COMFORTABLE SILENCE
19th September 2025 – 17th October 2025
A solo exhibition by Rebecca Bonaci
Curated by Gabriel Zammit
Detail from a work by Rebecca Bonaci & Exhibition poster of Wens: Comfortable Silence
Wens: Comfortable Silence
A solo exhibition by Rebecca Bonaci
Curated by Gabriel Zammit
“Morning coffee. Applying talcum powder before putting on warm clothes. A hot shower after a long day. Nina’s smell. The smell of spring. The smell of the sea. The smell of the air outside at 5am. The smell of rain. Soaking up the sun after getting out of the sea. Empty beaches. Fresh bed linen. Hot stew and Maltese bread. Mum’s Sunday roast. Finding chocolate when you thought there was none left. Lying on the floor. Cuddles. Washing my hair. Early mornings.
Nina’s smile.”
Wens: Comfortable Silence is a solo exhibition by Rebecca Bonaci, curated by Gabriel Zammit
In this exhibition Bonaci explores the immense potential of the daily mundane, finding solace in the quiet rhythms of lives lived together in love and intimacy behind closed doors. Drawing from her own experience, Bonaci turns to painting, drawing and sculpture to reveal how the most profound meaning often resides in the smallest of moments—where silence is not emptiness, but a space of connection, memory, and belonging.
At a time when productivity is prioritised over nearly everything else, Bonaci’s choice to depict moments of intimacy with no purpose beyond themselves becomes quietly radical, “offering a moment of stillness in a fast-moving world,” as she phrases it. Her work claims that fulfillment arises not through the ego-driven construction of self, but through giving, through relationality, and through an awareness of the other.
Portrait of Rebecca Bonaci
Bonaci’s paintings breathe with the textures and tones of the Maltese land, where stone and sea fold into the contours of memory. Her work carries the quiet weight of nostalgia, layering colours that represent a landscape both ancient and eternal.
Shaped by moments of her own journey, each piece becomes an intimate offering. An emotion, a fragment of experience that expands outward into the universal. In this way, the personal dissolves into the shared, inviting empathy and connection through the act of looking.
Central to her visual language are figures inspired by Malta’s prehistoric heritage. For Bonaci, these forms do not represent goddesses but rather Ancestors, people of the past who become vessels bridging past and present, creating a sense of stillness suspended in time.