H is for human

Abstract

Reading into the various layers of meaning which this exhibition presents, can lead to disquietude if one is not up to intellectual confrontation. Attard’s innuendo on the word hardcore, coupled with the ambiguous play of the letter ‘H’ which is set apart from the rest of the word in order to disambiguate the term from its negative connotations, set the tone for what we are about to experience – work that conceptually oscillates between the word’s reference to sexual explicitness and to its use as element of intransigence. (Caesar’s definition is that the H stands for Human, but indeed it can equally stand for Habit, Humour, Hallucination, Humane or Hatred... and so many other H-uman qualities that have been with us since our detachment from the planet’s primordial soup). The allusion to core as the very nucleus of humankind anchors the exhibition into a

universal brotherhood and gives it direction and thematic coherence. The show is therefore a manifestation of human lived experience in all its complicatedness and intricacy, embracing also what we normally perceive as inhuman – the bestial, the barbaric and the brutal – a true study in phenomenological complexity and an affirmation of the loss of confidence in a post-Darwinian society’s perfection.