Alberto Favaro

Alberto Favaro is an architect and artist who has been residing in Malta since 2003. His architectural work has consistently been accompanied by artistic research aimed at questioning and problematising space and liminality. He utilises various media to express his ideas, including graphic art, drawing and printing, photography, installation, performance, and ceramics.
He has shown work at Utopian Nights in 2018, Mahalla Festival in 2020, the Mdina Cathedral Biennale in 2020, Spazio Gamma Milano in 2021 and the Paper Biennale of Sofia in 2024. In 2021, Favaro’s illustrations were featured in the publication The Crisis and Future of Democracy by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
Theodor Adorno described art as an object devoid of functionality. The “Duck” collection explores the subtle threshold between functional and artistic objects. Each piece is a liminal object, shaped like a toilet detergent bottle but it is elevated by being made out of ceramic and decorated with glazes. The objects inhabit two distinct worlds simultaneously: they can be displayed in a cabinet of ancient ceramics or in a supermarket compartment, blending easily into both settings. They can serve as a metaphor for an ugly duckling with a noble soul, or for a grotesque disguise that fails to conceal a profound essence. In the “Duck,” collection the ceramic transformation of plastic represents a denial of its intended use. Toilet detergents are designed to be squeezed, which is impossible with the incompressible nature of ceramics. This mechanical alteration of the material exposes a short circuit of meaning and highlights the object's uselessness, as described by Adorno.