Visual artist Anne Ridler just finished her residency in Malta.

Blitz has announced the four incoming artist residents for 2018. Now in its third year, the open call for the 2018 Blitz Residency Programme received a record 200 applications, from all over the globe.

This year's first resident was UK artist Anna Ridler, who only just finished her residency last week. Anna is a London-based artist and researcher whose practice brings together technology, literature and drawing to create both art and critical writing. 

In Malta, Anna created an ‘imagined archive’, using the National Archives of Malta as a starting point, and imagining the data or stories that have not been collected.

Zahra Al-Mahdi and Hanan Al-Alawi, from Kuwait, take up residencies from May 27 to June 23. Zahra Al-Mahdi is a visual artist, writer, graphic novelist, and filmmaker. Her debut graphic novel is titled We, The Borrowed.

Hanan Al-Alawi is an installation artist working mainly with glass, photography and found objects. In Malta, Zahra and Hanan will explore the role of memory in rethinking the national historical narrative of citizenry, gender roles and sexuality in Kuwait.

Their focus will be on the counter-memories of mobile identities such as transsexual and transgender citizens, by forming points of connection with Maltese multicultural constructs. Their findings will take the form of video installation, a mobility map and models built from animation, sketches, found material, photographs, mixed media images, and other materials.

Borbála Soós, from the UK, will be in residency between September 3 and 30. Borbála is a curator, born in Budapest, Hungary, and now based in London. Borbála’s recent research focuses on the development of structures found in plants and fungi, as well as certain sea creatures, and explores these as metaphors for social organisation. She asks: How does the sea think? Do plants communicate? What are animals dreaming about? We are inseparable from our companion species, and dependent on them for our survival. It is an illusion that we can detach ourselves, and keep only within the borders of our bodies, or retreat within the walls of our cities.