I received a notification on my instagram account a few weeks ago which read “franbalzansculpture started following you.” The first thought that came to mind when I read the notification – and started scrolling through numerous images of witty-looking head sculptures – was: “is franbalzan…the same Francesca Balzan that I’m thinking of: Maltese art historian and curator?” Interested to find out if it was the same person, I looked her up on facebook and much to my surprise, it did turn out that it was her.

Eve Cocks [EC]: Francesca, it was only recently, thanks to Instagram, that I got to know about your interest in sculpting, and I have to admit that, I was pretty surprised when I found out!

Francesca Balzan [FB]: I’ve been sculpting for years and years now. In fact, I’ve been sculpting for so long that I can’t even remember when I started practicing it. Nonetheless, it was about a year ago that I quietly started posting pictures of my work publically on Instagram. Before that, only a few family members and close friends knew about my “hidden” practice.

EC: How come you’ve been working silently for all these years?

FB: Well, because it’s not easy to throw yourself out there (in the art-world) and proclaim that you are a sculptor, especially if you’re mostly self-taught, like me!

EC: So, you’ve never gone public with your work before Instagram?

FB: The first, and the only time, that I had gone public was in 2006. I had taken part in a collaborative sculpture installation with another artist (and a great friend of mine) Celia Borg Cardona; the installation was titled FLIGHT. We participated in an international sculpture competition for a monumental sculpture to be installed at the (then) new Schengen wing at Malta International Airport. Every entry had to be anonymous and was strictly regulated in order that the international panel choosing the winning entry would not be affected by the names of the sculptors but by the quality of the proposed artwork. We chuckle every time we think how surprised they must have been when they opened the envelope and saw that the selected entry was by two women artists. As far as we know, this was the first monumental sculpture that was co-authored by women in Malta. The finished sculpture measured 4m x 3m x 2m and the various stages are documented on Celia’s website.

EC: The human head plays an integral role in your work.

FB: I am obsessed with faces. I’ve always enjoyed sculpting heads since I was a little girl. In fact, I still have vivid memories of myself sculpting heads out of different materials which I used to find running around my parents’ house including candle wax, bits of air-drying clay, and…I don’t know if I should be saying this 🙂 … cheese.

EC: Cheese? 🙂

FB: Yes! [Laughter] …I remember being at the dinner table and modelling heads out of tiny pieces of cheddar cheese; my mother used to get annoyed at me as she insisted it was bad manners to play with food.

EC: [Laughter] …and, what’s your principal sculpting material today?

FB: All of my works are made out of clay; the large-scale free-standing heads (such as The Kind One – image below) are sculpted in clay, whereas the miniature ones (images above) are made from polymer clay.

EC: I am glad that I got to see your head-sculptures in person as I would have never realised how tiny and detailed some of them are; I mean…you’ve actually sculpted/carved the inside of their mouth – throat, back-teeth and all. I’m also intrigued by the shimmery quality of the material.

FB: Well, I guess that, like any other piece of art, you have to physically see them in order to get the real feel of the works and appreciate certain details, textures… In contrast to the large-scale heads, the miniature ones are in fact quite detailed; since polymer clay is more versatile than normal clay, it allows me to create a fair amount of fine detail that wouldn’t be possible with standard clay.

EC: I noticed that you like incorporating everyday objects and materials in some of your work – cutlery, pearls, coins…

FB: I’ve just moved house so I am temporarily using the kitchen as a working-space until I set up my own studio. It seems that the surroundings are influencing my work as most of the objects and materials that I use are kitchen-related objects or items which litter my kitchen drawers, shelves… I enjoy the play between found objects and traditional art material.

EC: Who are the characters (portraits) in your works?

FB: Some are completely invented, others are loosely based on real-life contemporary and historical figures such as Mahatma Ghandi, Queen Victoria and the Maltese politician Dominic Mintoff – the portraits I create are not straight forward portraits, meaning that I do not replicate already sculpted/painted portraits, I recreate them, that’s how I generally work. I think I’m probably closer to a caricaturist than a portrait sculptor.

EC: You tend to hash-tag your sculptures ‘talking-heads’ and ‘impossible conversations’…

FB: I refer to most of them as ‘talking-heads’ because they are portrayed as though they are actually conversing with one another, at times even arguing…and ‘impossible conversations’ because most of the works represent different characters, characters who have never met in real life (and will never do) as they’re either fictional or were born/lived in different eras; therefore it’s impossible that their conversations would have happened or will ever happen, but who knows how interesting it would be to get them together – I just love to imagine what they would have said to each other.

EC: Are the talking-heads made as individual works of art or as group pieces?

FB: Some are made as individual pieces and some are made as group sculptures, or in a series. Nonetheless, since I am after creating narratives with my work, I do re-use/recombine them to compose new narratives or different impossible conversations.

EC: What kind of narratives/conversations?

FB: Well, each work represents a different type of narrative/conversation. The title of the works (as well as the Instagram hash-tags) do suggest what the narratives are about, nonetheless, most of them only exist in my mind.

EC:… I’m curious to know about the narrative or significance behind Something is Brewing (image above).

FB: The individual heads in Something is Brewing were conceived as a series and the idea behind it all was that the pearls (the pearls which I’ve integrated into the mouths or at the tip of the tongue ) stand for words – so if the heads are represented biting a pearl, it is though they are biting or swallowing their words back (or even the thoughts on their mind). I’ve basically tried to create sculpture which depicted expressions like ‘spitting out words’ or ‘swallowing your words back’. Words are intangible – so I gave them tangibility with pearls.

EC: I find your works rather witty…

FB: Glad you do! When I sculpt I am playing. Many times I let the accidental shape of the clay suggest the outcome, but invariably it has to be humorous. I find myself laughing as I sculpt, as a totally ludicrous face emerges out of the clay. I absolutely adore the faces of old men and twisted exaggerated noses. Those are my inspiration and vocabulary. I also try and integrate some surprise element….to get the viewer to do a double-take. I think that the ‘I get it’ moment is precious.

EC: At times I feel that you are trying to expose man’s wickedness…

FB: Well, I am seeing man’s badness, viciousness, stupidity, ego and all of that, however I turn it into humour. I’m always trying to make fun of the situation.

EC: I’m intrigued by your chess-set!

FB: This was a commissioned piece, suggested by the person commissioning it. Since I’m obsessed with faces, I decided to recreate the conventional chess players into different human/animal characters while retaining the overall arrangement of chess pieces. Please note that I don’t play chess and I think the game is pretty devious, so I had to do some research about it. I’ve turned the knights, usually represented as horse heads, into laughing donkeys with open mouths for example and the pawns into stupid, grumpy men – when put together they actually look like a choir of imbeciles (images below). I found the towers particularly challenging to do. I spent weeks trying to figure out how I am going to create towers out of faces. I resolved this by interpreting four famous towers and integrating facial features of personalities who are famously associated with these towers, Osama bin Laden is a case in point – I recreated his face squashed between the Twin Towers with a tear rolling down his cheek, regretting the mess he had created. I strongly feel that the world changed on that particular day. It was a shock to the system, individually and collectively and something that will remain with me forever. Sometimes I don’t do humour.

EC: ….and what about the King and the Queen portrayed in “Take our advice” they whispered and Queen No. 1?

FB: Quinten Massys’ wonderful and imaginary ‘Queen of Tunis’ inspired Queen No. 1, whereas the King conversing with Bishops is inspired by Louis XIV – now how about that for an impossible conversation? As the chess pieces move across the board an infinite variety of conversations are created…more impossible conversations across the eras.

EC: I love King Louis XIV’s wig 🙂 …is it made from steel wool?

FB: Yes it is! To make sure I got the wig right, I actually looked at 18th century wigs.

EC: I really think that you should exhibit your works!

FB: I might exhibit the large-scale heads eventually, who knows…

EC: You’ve recently posted an image of a painting you had done about a year ago, are you also a painter?

FB: I do paint regularly as well. Again the subjects are exclusively faces. Celia Borg Cardona, Debbie Caruana Dingli and I have a long-standing weekly appointment at Celia’s studio where we paint portraits from the live. I feel that these are sketches in colour and not finished pieces. On the other hand, I consider my sculpture, my really unique, utterly personal expression. It is something that makes me laugh and that I’m putting out there to make people laugh, but something I’m also dead serious about. I care deeply about my work and I’m really nervous about putting it out there.

If you would like to view more of Francesca Balzan’s work you can do so by following her on Instagram franbalzansculpture