Culture Minister Bonnici toured the contemporary visual arts festival, VIVA 2018, this morning with Fondazzjoni Kreattività Chairman Rupert Cefai.
Made up of eleven exhibitions, as well as ancillary events and curator tours, VIVA 2018 engages over 50 artists, in collaboration with curators, urban planners, researchers and educators to create a two-month-long festival, with a strong international dimension.
The theme selected for this year's VIVA - multiplicity - is one that addresses both the type of work that has been selected for the festival as well as the growing workforce within the visual arts scene in Malta.
Young Artist of the Year, Matthew Schembri showed Minister Bonnici around his work WiN; an exhibition dealing with chance and personal loss. French artist Sébastien Cailleux, and local artist Luca Cauchi were also present, to discuss their exhibition Imagine Water, Catch the Drop; a culmination of several years of work involving local school-children.
Other VIVA exhibitions include VAC - Visual Acoustics, curated by Zsolt Gyenes, and produced in collaboration with the Malta School of Art, Found ǎ Mentalism I - curated by Dresden-based Ostrale, exhibited at Palazzo Messina in collaboration with the German-Maltese Circle and the Goethe Institute. Another international collaboration is developed with the China Cultural Centre in Malta, which this year will host the work of Zhang Tinqun, curated by Liang Shuhan, in The Shape of Water.
Minister Owen Bonnici said that VIVA has now matured into an established festival, and that the festival's collaborations and long-term development of projects ensure a broad resonance within the visual arts scene in Malta.
Fondazzjoni Kreattività Chairman Rupert Cefai said that VIVA has come to serve as a strong platform for the contemporary arts in Malta, exhibiting the work of Maltese and international contemporary visual artists. Together with the Art Additives series, VIVA 2018 is providing a space for artists, curators and creatives to collaborate, investigate and deliberate.
Exhibitions to open later during the festival include Fluid Space, in collaboration with the Gabriel Caruana Foundation, The 'Tao' of Nature with the China Cultural Centre in Malta, and the collaborative exhibition (Met)afourisms; VIVA will continue until 27th May.
VIVA 2018 is produced by Fondazzjoni Kreattività, in collaboration with ACM, the Goethe Institute,
the German Maltese Circle, Malta China Cultural Centre, Malta School of Art, Spazju Kreattiv, Ostrale, the Gabriel Caruana Foundation, the Meta Foundation,EU-Japan Fest and EDAAV and is supported by Valletta 2018.
Photos by James Caruana