The visual arts will be taking their rightful place in the Maltese cultural calendar during a week-long festival dedicated entirely to art in the form of photography, video and film.
Malta’s first visual arts’ celebration – the Valletta International Visual Arts Festival, or Viva – will be held between September 1 and 7. But, artistic director Raphael Vella wants the benefits of the festival to extend beyond those dates.
“So far in Malta we’ve had festivals for various forms of art, including music, dance and theatre. This is a new festival – one dedicated to the visual arts… But I am a bit weary of the term ‘festival’ as, organising a week of events is not enough. We wanted something more long-term to put the local product on an international platform,” Mr Vella said.
In order to achieve this, he said, international “key players” in the visual arts’ scene have been invited to be part of the event.
Apart from a range of exhibitions, the seven-day festival will also include a Curatorial School, an intensive one-week curatorial programme with international speakers from various European institutions.
International curators, such as Dutch Mieke Bal, will deliver lectures and exhibit their work to share their experience with local artists. And, he added, to ensure that local artists would remain in touch with the international scene, a group of three Dutch curators would be coming to Malta a week before the festival to meet with artists. These curators would eventually be organising an international visual arts’ festival, to be held in 2015, and may opt to include Maltese works.
Viva will also include the third edition of Divergent Thinkers, an exhibition which presents contemporary artistic practices by young Maltese artists that explore divergent thinking.
Culture Minister Owen Bonnici welcomed the initiative that made art more accessible and offered an educational dimension. He was glad to see this project was one with long-term vision and left an “inheritance” for local artists to enjoy.
Viva is being co-organised by St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity, Arts Council Malta, the Valletta 2018 Foundation and Aġenzija Żgħażagħ.
For more information visit www.viva.org.mt.