“RITUAL” is a multi-disciplinary art project that aims to re-enchant the Mediterranean through rituals of transformation. The project, which centres around a five-metre tunnel-like, suspended installation began in Tunis, Tunisia, as part of JAOU Biennale, and will be gradually built, adding five metres in each new context and displayed all around the Mediterranean sea (23 countries, final size of the artwork to be 115m).

The project involves artist duo PONKS - French visual artist Julien Vinet and Maltese poet Sam Alekksandra working within the local context, with members of coastal Mediterranean communities, poets, sailors, residents, artists, craftsman and scholars to engage and reflect on rituals and challenge constructs of time, to understand the metamorphoses needed as a region in confronting 21st-century societal, environmental, and humanistic challenges.

Constructed entirely of old maritime charts, threaded poetry on painted translucent sheets of cured glue folded and holding on 35 hollow iron rods, the artwork is suspended delicately in the air, seeming to defy gravity, creating a sense of weightlessness and intrigue.