Mosta’s Female Art Takeover: Five Maltese Women Rewrite the Island’s Cultural Script
**Five Female Artists Transform Mosta Into a Celebration of Womanhood and Island Heritage**
Mosta’s iconic dome has witnessed countless processions, feasts, and fireworks, but this week the rotunda is sharing the spotlight with five home-grown women who are quietly reshaping Malta’s cultural map. Inside a 19th-century townhouse just 200 metres from the basilica, the exhibition “Ħamsin: Five Voices, One Island” has turned three floors of creaking limestone and wrought-iron balconies into a living manifesto of female creativity.
Running until 28 July, the show brings together photographers, painters, and mixed-media artists—Claire Farrugia, Ritienne Zammit, Debbie Bonello, Sarah Calleja, and Għanja de Gabriele—whose ages span 27 to 63 and whose roots reach from Gozo’s terraced fields to Valletta’s post-war backstreets. Between them they count two mothers, one architect, a former midwife, and a skateboarder who still bombs the Għallis ramp at dusk. What unites them is not a style but a stubborn refusal to wait for permission.
“For years we were told ‘women don’t sell’ by village dealers,” laughs Farrugia, whose large-format aerial photos of Mnajdra at equinox hang opposite Bonello’s textile sculptures stitched from faded festa banners. “We decided to create our own market, in our own square.”
That square is Mosta—geographically central, symbolically loaded. The town’s population has doubled since 1990, ballooning with young families priced out of Sliema flats and returning expats renovating farmhouses in Ta’ Qali. Yet cultural infrastructure lagged behind the coffee shops. “We have six pastizzerias and one theatre,” notes local councillor Romina Borg, who opened the exhibition. “Culture was something you drove to Valletta for.” Borg secured a €20,000 EU micro-fund to convert the vacant townhouse—formerly a bridal atelier—into a pop-up gallery. The project is part of a wider strategy to decentralise the arts and keep creative graduates on the island.
The timing is political. Malta’s National Cultural Policy 2021-2025 pledges gender parity on public boards, but women still hold only 28 % of permanent curatorial posts. Meanwhile, female enrolment at the School of Art has outnumbered male for the past decade. “We’re the majority in the classroom but the minority on the walls,” says Zammit, whose abstract canvases map limestone quarries as pink wounds across an ochre landscape. “This show proves the pipeline is full—just plug it in.”
Visitors have responded. In the first weekend alone, 1,400 people climbed the narrow staircase, signing a guestbook that reads like a census of the island: nanniet who recognise the lace patterns in Bonello’s fabric collages, teenage girls taking selfies against Calleja’s neon word-piece that pulses “Ma Nistgħu Nistennew Aktar” (We Can’t Wait Any Longer), and British retirees who compare Zammit’s quarry scars to Cornwall’s clay pits. “I’ve lived in Mosta for 15 years and never seen anything like this,” says retired teacher Michaela Grech. “My daughter wants to study fine art; now she sees a future here, not just in London.”
The economic ripple is already visible. The corner wine bar has extended hours, hiring two part-time servers to cope with post-exhibition traffic. A pop-up stall outside sells hand-pulled prints for €30—cheap enough for teenagers, credible enough for collectors. Borg confirms two vacant storefronts have received rental inquiries from craft collectives since opening night.
Perhaps the most subversive element is the calendar. The show closes the same week Malta festa season peaks in Mosta—when the streets usually belong to brass bands and petards. By occupying the cultural slot normally reserved for saints, the artists are claiming space for alternative heroines. “We’re not anti-tradition,” insists de Gabriele, whose sound installation layers church bells with recorded lullabies sung by Gozitan fisherwives. “We’re adding verses to the hymn.”
As dusk falls, the dome’s floodlights switch on, casting a honey-coloured glow through the townhouse windows. Inside, five women clink plastic cups of Cisk and debate their next project: a travelling version of the exhibition for Gozo’s villages, funded by print sales. Outside, a queue snakes down the cobbled street—proof that when Maltese women lead, the island follows.
