Flight Beyond the Visible

by Olaug Vethal

• Ink on paper
• 44cm by 64cm
• 52.5cm by 72.5cm framed
• 2000

In Flight Beyond the Visible, Olaug Vethal draws upon the visual language of Japanese art, combining echoes of Utagawa Kunisada’s elegant female figures and decorative pattern with the long tradition of birds and cranes in Japanese painting and printmaking.

Here, however, Vethal transforms these sources into a metaphysical vision. Birds sweep across the composition, crossing boundaries between figure, landscape and fragmented fields of colour. The solitary woman appears suspended within this movement, inhabiting a space that belongs neither entirely to the physical world nor to the imagined. Flight becomes a metaphor for transcendence. In Vethal’s metaphysical world, the birds seem capable of passing where the human body cannot, beyond fixed time and place, and beyond the limits of the visible into another realm of existence.

This work is currently hung at Spazju A, Spazju Kreattiv, Valletta until 25th October 2026 as part of the exhibition ‘Beyond The Visible | The Metaphysical Worlds of Olaug Vethal, curated by Christine Xuereb and in collaboration with Christine X Art Gallery