Out of 4,013 submissions from 104 countries, Maltese artists Sasha Vella and Mario Abela have been selected to participate in Crea Open 2025, an international contemporary art exhibition held at Crea Cantiere del Contemporaneo in Venice. The exhibition, running from 12 to 27 April, offers a global platform for contemporary artists and marks these two emerging artists' debut on the international art stage.
Bringing pride to Malta, both artists were recognised with top honours at the opening of 2570 Revolutions Around the Earth. Mario Abela was awarded First Prize, winning the prestigious CREA OPEN 2025 title, while Sasha Vella was selected for the international artistic residency organised by CRAG Gallery in Turin. Their achievements highlight not only individual excellence, but also the strength and resonance of contemporary Maltese art on the global stage.
Curated by Pier Paolo Scelsi and Ilaria Cera, together with a diverse team of international collaborators, the exhibition is structured into five thematic sections: Introspection, Body, More than Human, Technology and Data and Society. These interconnected "constellations" provide a reflective journey through the global concerns and personal narratives shaping contemporary artistic practice today. 2570 Revolutions Around the Earth offers the visitor a path divided into thematic islands, into planets or constellations, a path in which the finalist works of the prize can be the protagonists of a story, of a concert, conceived to arrive at reflecting on the present, on our historical era. The artistic mediums in this exhibition consist of painting, photography, sculpture, performance, video art, textile art, installation and land art.
Sasha Vella's selected work, The Illusion of Solitude, is a 35mm film photograph taken during a solo hiking trip in the Dolomites. Shot on Lomochrome Purple film, the image transforms natural greens into vivid purples, capturing the surreal ridgeline of Seceda at the start of a 16km walk. More than a landscape, the work is an evocation of presence and contemplation; a visual meditation on solitude and scale. "True solitude," Vella suggests, "is an illusion in nature's embrace."
The photograph, printed 90 by 60cm on fine art German Etching paper and mounted on di-bond, reflects Vella's wider practice in walking art, where the journey itself becomes the primary medium. For her, the walk is not merely preparation but the very condition for creation. Armed with a camera, sketchbook or journal, she gravitates towards remote, ever-changing environments, seeking to document both physical terrain and emotional landscapes.
Vella's approach is deeply influenced by artists like Hamish Fulton and Richard Long, whose work also centres on walking as art. In her case, this translates into film photography that often uses expired stock, embracing unpredictability and chance. She explores themes of environmental transformation, human impermanence and the quiet act of noticing.
A graduate of the University of Malta's Digital Arts Department (BFA Hons, 2021), Vella debuted her solo show Wabi Sabi in 2023 at Il-Kamra ta' Fuq and has since featured in several collective exhibitions, including Mara and Far From Somewhere. Her most recent artist book, The Passages of Change, combines photography and writing based on solitary walks along Gozo's coastline, continuing her fascination with shifting geographies and internal landscapes.
Outside her visual practice, Vella has also worked as a journalist and podcast host, engaging with socio-political and environmental issues and themes that subtly inform her artwork.
With The Illusion of Solitude, Vella not only represents Malta on a prestigious international platform but also offers a powerful, poetic contribution to contemporary art. Her work reminds us that in walking, observing, and surrendering to the unknown, we can discover both the world and ourselves anew.
Mario Abela, also selected as a finalist, presents The Eternal Hunt, a large-scale oil painting (133 x 169cm) created in 2024. Moved by philosophical deconstruction and inspired by Watteau's Rendez-vous de Chasse, Abela reinterprets the idealised imagery of leisure and harmony, exposing the deeper emotional contradictions that underlie human experience. "My painting seeks to disrupt the binary between joy and suffering, revealing how internal struggles often sit just beneath the surface," he explains. Rendered in oil on canvas at an imposing scale, this work engulfs the viewer in a visceral, almost operatic symphony of flesh, fabric and fluid form. At once grotesque and sublime, the composition brims with baroque intensity; folds of skin and drapery intertwine with sinew-like tendrils and hybrid creatures that seem caught mid-transformation. The work resists narrative clarity, favouring instead a psychological terrain where trauma, desire and decay coalesce. Colours shift from muted flesh tones to molten reds and bruised purples, suggesting both corporeal suffering and the internal churn of emotional states. Abela's technique is rooted in classical draftsmanship but fiercely contemporary in intent. This underscores his interest in deconstructing the idealised image, revealing instead a haunting theatre of the unresolved.
A self-taught artist with a background in graphic design, Abela is currently a senior lecturer at MCAST's Institute for the Creative Arts. His work has received international recognition, including being longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize and named a 2024 brand ambassador for Cretacolor Vienna. He works primarily in painting and drawing, often grappling with existential themes, symbolic forms and emotional complexity.
Together, Vella and Abela offer contrasting yet complementary perspectives on contemporary existence: one through the slow, meditative act of walking and observing nature, the other through layered, philosophical reinterpretations of classical imagery. Their inclusion in Crea Open 2025 underscores the vitality and diversity of Malta's contemporary art scene on the international stage.
Professor Louis Laganà PhD (Lough) is an academic, art critic and practising artist
