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Different perspectives on women in the arts

Learning from University of Malta Conference Tuesday 28 March 2023 at 10:23 am

by Nataša Pantović

As Malta approaches another Equinox, or Eastern, University ensures that the programme of events celebrate Woman’s Day with a cultural twist. The spring season brings another Conference entitled: ‘Different perspectives on women in the arts'.

The women’s activists fought for women’s right to work, to vote, and to have equal access to education. In 1882 in England, women were for the first time allowed to keep their own earnings, and were allowed into Oxford or Cambridge University much later. Change came at a snail’s pace.

We examined the fascination Oriental art and life in the Middle East held for European artists. What appears to have been a ‘golden cage’ carried an unusual amount of freedom. Oriental interiors, depicted usually in Constantinople (Istanbul) hid pictures of exotic, colourful Oriental carpets, servants bringing in entertainment, and the naked women bathing or resting on the carpets or sofas seemingly perfectly content.

However, in Europe women’s natural place was in the home, where she is protected from all danger and temptation. The man guards the woman from all, within his house. A luxurious enclosed life did not refer to a working class or a village women cultivating lands, or slaving away surrounded by many kids in a house with no electricity, no running water, with heavy loads to carry.

The pictures do say a lot more about male fantasies than the reality of life in a harem. Ottoman Princess Senila Sultan in a letter to her friend says: ‘The things they make up about us are unimaginable. They believe that we are slaves that we are shut up in chambers and left to die. We live in our cages, dressed in costumes of pink and light green satin and dance and sing songs, and even pipes of opium.’

This event was introduced by Dr Charlene Vella (Department of Art and Art History), and chaired by paintings conservator Rachel Vella. Dr Mark Sagona (Head of Department) delivered a welcoming note. Papers on varying topics on women in the arts were presented by Art History graduates Rachel Abdilla, Nadette Xuereb, Hannah Dowling, Fine Arts graduate Marie Claire Farrugia and textile conservator Leyre Quevedo Bayona.

Chairperson: Rachel Vella

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Mental Health in Schools & Positive Parenting

Learning from Mental Health in Schools Conference Friday 17 March 2023 at 2:44 pm

Just went to the Mental Health in Schools Conference

by Nataša Pantović 

Our body is like a tree, it roots itself spreading high and its fruit, an apple rots when it is hit. And we are all fully aware how the life-force within teenagers can hit hard and frequently. Patches can spread so quickly within our-own minds that we have a feeling that the hit will take the whole apple if we do not react consciously. Likewise our mental health can easily be weakened by the stress a family passes through during the time of exams when our teens find it extremly hard to stop and concentrate - in a hedonistic sunny society offering lots of safe and free fun for teens, foreigners, English students. 

Both Yogananda and Krishnamurti refer to mind as the toughest elephant to contain. The Christianity too offer sucrifice as a solution to the lives of individuals, helping refugees that have been stripped away from families, loved ones, and from their own support structure.

The Qawra school, the Maltese President in her openning speach Dr Marie Louise Colero Preca has mentioned, now has 56 nationalities.  Handling such diverse and multinational environment can at certain moments be extremly difficult, when our day to day lives are impacted, can we go back to positivity? The English studies have shown that One in Four people will need mental health support throughout a given year. Usualy young men. Kids are sometimes suicidal at the age of 9. Therefore, we as English and Maltese community, need to strive as nations, to make mental health services accessible to all, dealing with mental health not mental illness.

The group discussion and workshops have come back with a similar message: make Mental Health (not Illness) for all a global priority, empowering teachers and individuals. 

Irrespective of age, the solution should not be further medication, but awareness that to avoid the human-contact we separate from each other. Mental health should reach everybody. In a holistic environment local NGOs and Local Concils should include family members in a healing and supporting environment, a walk, a dance, a shared meal. It is solidarity with all and sensitivity to all, that are common targets that our society must address.

If mental health or mindfulness is at your heart, you could be a young leader, able to implement it or drive various initiatives.

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The Mystics

Wednesday 25 January 2023 at 11:21 am

Worshiping Silence following the Mastery of the World’s Best Mystics we can touch Samadhi...

A-Ma Alchemy of Love by Nataša Pantović

What happens when you find a perfect note? What happens when you experience Samadhi listening to the perfect sound or observing a perfect painting? What happens when your expand to such an extend that it is blessed by , unexplainable, most subtle beauty?

your-highest-potential-is-waiting_blessing poem by Natasa Pantovic

Your Highest Potential is Waiting Blessing Poem by Natasa Pantovic

At a music concert of Armenian State Orchestra of around a 100 talented and for decades trained musicians a Master violinist took us to this magic state.

A grand piano recital of one of the best world pianist Grigory Sokolov entitled "The Legend is Back" took us onto a 3 hours journey through Haydn's sonatas and finished with 5 encores at midnight. While on this "single man on a piano" marathon, we as his audience stopped breathing with every pause he performed. He mastered his and the energy of entire Conference Centre crowd, taking us into the higher states of consciousness...

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Interview Ema Sintayu with Nataša Pantović Maltese Serbian #author Life Mission Vision Inspirations

Interview by Ema Sintayu Monday 21 November 2022 at 09:37 am

Natasa Pantovic on her biggest inspirations behind her books, her life journeys around the globe and her ventures within the business world

 and 

As ancient worlds consciousness researcher, Serbian/Maltese author and businesswoman Natasa Pantovic and I sat knee to knee from one another, she spoke proudly to me of her several accomplishments throughout her life.

Interview

Since I had previously researched that she had written up to ten books as an author, several of which had taken years to write, I began with my first question:

“I researched that you’re an author that has written up to ten books within your career, this doesn’t sound like much of an overnight process, so how many years did it take you to write them, and when did you begin?” 

“It is a lifetime Journey isn’t it?”

She answered, laughing gently before continuing. “I have published my very first book in 1993 in Serbia, a very long time ago, I’m actually at the moment fifty four years old, so I had a huge amount of years to do all of this.”

ema-sintayu-interview-with-natasa-pantovic

Natasa Pantovic with Ema Sintayu on her biggest inspirations holding ancient Serbian from Vincha and her book Metaphysics of Sound: In Search of the Name of God

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The Great Wave

Learning from Van Gogh & Hokusai about 19th Century Art Great Wave Thursday 30 September 2021 at 9:19 pm

19th Century & Search for Indefinite, Infinite Impression 

Reconsidering Transcendence in Art

Presence or Absence of Learning from Van Gogh & Hokusai by Nataša Pantović

The late 1800s was the time of Impressionism as a radical art movement , centered around Parisian painters, the wave that rebelled against classical subject and gave respect to Mother Nature.

Travelling to their thought-form, Vincent van Gogh to the artist friend Emile:

“But now look, ... you surely can't seriously imagine a confinement like that, in the middle of the road, with the mother starting to pray instead of suckling her child? Those bloated frogs of priests on their knees as though they're having an epileptic fit are also part of it, God alone knows how and why!

No, I can't call that sound, for if I am at all capable of spiritual ecstasy, then I feel exalted in the face of truth, of what is possible, which means I bow down before the study - one that had enough power in it to make a Millet tremble - of peasants carrying a calf born in the fields back home to the farm.

That, my friend, is what people everywhere, from France to America, have felt. And having performed a feat like that, can you really contemplate reverting to medieval tapestries? Can that really be what you mean to do? No! You can do better than that, and know that you must look for what is possible, logical and true.”

Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Emile Bernard, Saint-Rémy, 1889

“Now to enlighten you, my dear M. Van Gogh, ... I am searching for and at the same time expressing a general state of mind rather than a unique thought, to have someone else's eye experience an indefinite, infinite impression. To suggest a suffering does not indicate what kind of suffering: purity in general and not what kind of purity. Literature is one (painting also). Consequently, suggested and not explained thought.”

Letter from Paul Gauguin to Theo van Gogh. At this time, Vincent was 36 year old.

The two striking waves in Blue: 2 Great Waves - Hokusai 1883 & Van Gogh 1989

First seen outside Japan in the 1880s, Van Gogh's brother was one of the first Europeans to collect Japanese prints and has admired Japanese art. 

The Starry Night Vincent Van Gogh, 1889 & Japanese print Hokusai Great Wave 1833

 

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