Maltese artist Shanice Farrugia is set to present her debut solo exhibition, (UN)EXPRESSED, bringing together a series of self-portraits created over the past two years.
The exhibition explores emotional restraint, suppressed feelings and the weight of experiences that are often difficult to put into words.
Rather than focusing solely on likeness, Farrugia uses the face as a way of revealing internal emotion, with tired eyes, flushed skin, tension and stillness becoming recurring elements throughout the work.
Faces are also cropped, fragmented, submerged or partly concealed, reflecting the tension between wanting to express emotion and wanting to keep certain feelings private.
The exhibition is deeply personal, drawing on Farrugia’s experience of living alongside her father’s long-term illness and the idea of anticipatory grief, the sadness and fear of potentially losing someone while they are still present.
This theme is represented through the recurring figure of a raven, first appearing in The Sound of Pre-Grief, where it becomes a symbol of the uneasy space between hope and fear, presence and absence.
At the same time, (UN)EXPRESSED reaches beyond Farrugia’s own experience, inviting viewers to recognise their own feelings of uncertainty, vulnerability and emotions left unspoken.
Born in 2000, Farrugia is a Malta-based multidisciplinary artist working across drawing, painting and installation. She holds a First Class B.A. (Hons) in Fine Art from MCAST Institute for the Creative Arts and has exhibited in Malta, London, Berlin and Gibraltar.
Her work Landline Lullaby won both The Gallery Choice and People’s Choice Awards at the 2025 Summer Exhibition at The Gallery at Green & Stone in Chelsea, London. She was also selected for ARTIT’s Portrait Artists of the Year 2025 and was a finalist for Visual Artist of the Year at the FreeHour Awards 2026.
(UN)EXPRESSED marks Farrugia’s first solo exhibition and brings together some of her most personal work to date.