Austin Camlleri returns with a solo exhibition, after an absence of about 10 years from exhibiting in Malta. Joseph Agius talks to curator ROSA MARTINEZ about t
What connects this diverse group of persons: Julius Caesar, Fyodor Dostoevsky, the singer Prince, Susan Boyle and US Chief Justice John Roberts? They have all experienced one of the most misunderstood, maligned and stigmatising medical conditions – epilepsy.
Persons with epilepsy have been unfairly singled out, prosecuted and discriminated by various cultures and societies across the millennia. Persons with epilepsy have been and still are unjustly perceived as being possessed by magic or supernatural power, despite it being so common. It affects around one per cent of the population worldwide, across all ages.
This means that around 4,000 persons in Malta have epilepsy. One cannot stress enough that a person is not ‘epileptic’ or ‘suffers from epilepsy’, since such terms reinforce the stigmatisation.