30th October till 1st December 2026

The Monument of Self examines the transformation of self regard into a voracious social and architectural force. It traces an accelerating desire for visibility, scale and dominance, driven by an insatiable thirst for more: more acquisition, more possession, more status and more power. What has already been attained is never enough, as each acquisition generates the desire for the next.

Narcisio, a Maltese figure of excess, inhabits a vast penthouse, Hornet Tower, whose vertical form ruptures the skyline like a tear in an imagined divine order. His tower rises through the consumption of the surrounding village: its compact, honeycomb like domestic structures and communal fabric are displaced in exchange for a singular monument to private ambition. Here, “more” assumes the status of a new god, governing both aspiration and erasure.

Beneath Narcisio’s dominance, his subordinates experience a growing collective unease. Their proximity to his expanding appetite places their own identities under pressure, revealing how systems built around individual dominance can undermine shared belonging, memory and agency.

Yet the work proposes that the blindness of self absorption is ultimately confronted by an inevitable counterforce. The fantasy of permanence gives way to equilibrium; authority, legacy and possession gradually dissipate. Death emerges not simply as an ending, but as a metamorphosis of being, a final equalizer against the monumentality of the self.