Grieving can be a tightrope walk between expressing your sorrow and masking it so as not to come off as a martyr. Epokaliss is the collection that documents an artist’s rebirth through loss and grief. This particular piece was the work that triggered the whole collection and broke through a massive creative block I suffered after my mother died.

I watched my mother fade away in her second battle with cancer. On the 4th of November 2016, a singular phonecall fractured my world. At first, I thought the worst was over, but after loss comes false affection, isolation and an inheritance of costly responsibilities. They say no one is prepared to lose a parent, and as true as that is, losing a parent at 21 robs you of two lives – your loved one’s and your own planned life. I was left with a mind and life in pieces.

You’ll notice a distinct reference to baroque Christian art. Growing up queer and nuero-divergent on a catholic island can make the flaws of the church rather apparent. Throughout my youth I was forced to sit on uncomfortable furniture, under fluorescent lighting, listening to a series of old men effectively using scripture to justify hate – but the architecture and paintings were gorgeous.

I was taught that pretty much everything I enjoyed was sinful. I feel that many on the island succumb to this crippling weight of holy conformity and dull piety – in my case, it simply manifested in absolute distrust of organised religion. However, there’s nothing quite like a death in Malta to suck you back into the gilded neoclassical vaults of childhood trauma.

WTF is a simple expression of a lost young artist’s reaction to being thrown into a new, bleaker reality.