2025 'Grotto Girl' MUŻA National Museum of Fine Art Valletta Malta - Heritage Malta

Grotto Girl marks a historic first on Malta’s UNESCO World Heritage site, conceptually and physically transforming the 450-year-old well into a living artwork.

It is the culmination of my artist-led residency and community outreach project at MUŻA, Malta’s National Community Art Museum. Over months of research, participatory workshops, and site-specific engagement, I have brought together individual and collective narratives in a symbolic, immersive environment that explores identity, belonging, and cultural inheritance.

At the heart of the work is MUŻA’s 450-year-old courtyard well, which I reimagined as both metaphor and anchor. Growing up in a post-WWII Maltese immigrant family in Sydney, Australia, I have always been drawn to the layers of memory and history that sit beneath the surface of personal and national stories. As the “Grotto Girl,” I transformed this ancient well into a living installation—a contemporary grotto—shaped by the voices, gestures, and hands of the community in dialogue with its past and present.

Through hands-on workshops, I invited participants to work with clay—both a tactile, responsive material and a metaphor for transformation. Together we shaped objects that carry the imprint of lived memory, acts of remembrance, resilience, and redefinition. This collaborative installation is exhibited alongside my own dialogue exhibition, connected by a flowing ribbon that extends from the external courtyard into the internal gallery space, symbolically linking the well to the inner world of reflection.

The final installation is both artwork and archive: a porous vessel where each contribution remains distinct yet interwoven. It echoes the celebratory spirit of Maltese festi, but rather than closing in spectacle, it opens a space for contemplation, connection, and continuity.

For me, Grotto Girl is a sanctuary—a site where stories are held as much as they are told, where personal journeys meet communal heritage, and where the act of making becomes a path toward both individual and collective healing.

Exhibition is supported by:

Heritage Malta, Alka Ceramics, Rathenart Printing, Gemelli Framing, Marie Gallery5, Zamcor Media, Australian High Commission Malta

All Photography by Henry Zammit Cordina.

Grotto Girl Installation

From the entrance of MUŻA, visitors are drawn into the courtyard and the world of Grotto Girl.

Grotto Girl: a well of stories

Ceramic and satin ribbons - Permanent Collection of MUŻA Heritage Malta.

Grotto Girl detail, ceramic and 1000m satin ribbon, approx 170cm x 50cm x 50cm, 2025.

Grotto Girl rear detail.

Museum exhibition text.

Grotto Girl

Artist-in-residence exhibition.

Grotto made Flesh - Mary's Story

Oil on canvas, 152cm x 180cm, 2025.

Grotto Girl - She dreamed the other.

Ceramic, approx 150cm x 55cm x 40cm, 2025. Private Collection.

Grotto Girl - She dreamed the other (detail).

Five Maltese water motifs for community outreach.

Ceramic, all objects approx 25cm - 30cm. Private Collection.

Cactus Leaf (Il-Pala tax-xewk): A symbol of resilience and growth, offering nourishment and emotional healing.

Cowrie Shell (Bebbuxu tal-Baħar): Representing cultural exchange and the healing power of integrating diverse identities.

Fishing Boat (Luzzu): A vessel of connection, survival, and personal transformation.

Limestone (Ġebla tal-Franka): A symbol of heritage and the healing power of reconnecting with the past.

Spiral Wave (Spirali fil-forma ta’ Mewġ mit-Tempji ta’ Tarxien): A symbol of life’s cycles, the ebb and flow of emotional healing, and one’s connection to both the personal and collective environment.

Body as offering.

Mixed media and watercolour on Arches watercolour paper, 26cm x 19cm, 2025.

Beneath the paper rain.

Mixed media and photomontage on hand-painted archival pigment print on cotton rag, 173cm x 130cm, 2025.

Swan neck.

Oil on canvas, 44cm x 35cm, 2025.

Well of two suns.

Mixed media and photomontage on hand-painted archival pigment print on cotton rag, 173cm x 130cm, 2025

Double belonging.

Mixed media and photomontage on hand-painted archival pigment print on cotton rag, 173cm x 130cm, 2025.

Grotto Girl 1.

Mixed media and photomontage on hand-painted archival pigment print on cotton rag, 112cm x 151cm, 2025.

Alienated Tarago landscape.

Mixed media and photomontage on hand-painted archival pigment print on cotton rag, 167cm x 127cm, 2024.

Pinata Confessions.

Mixed media and photomontage on hand-painted archival pigment print on cotton rag, 173cm × 130cm, 2025.

Grotto Girl 2

Mixed media and photomontage on hand-painted archival pigment print on cotton rag,151cm x 112cm, 2025.

Echoes of the moonlit deep 2

Mixed media and photomontage on hand-painted archival pigment print on cotton rag, 151cm x 112cm, 2025.

Echoes of the moonlit deep 1.

Mixed media and photomontage on hand-painted archival pigment print on cotton rag, 100 × 73cm, 2025.

Grotto Girl - a well of stories.

This collaborative installation explores healing, heritage, identity, and the stories that shape us.

You are invited into a symbolic grotto — a space formed by memory, silence, and the shared imagination of the Maltese community and the artist. At its heart is MUŻA’s 450-year-old courtyard well, reimagined as a portal to the subconscious. Just as water is drawn from a well, stories rise from within — emerging from the depths of personal and collective experience.

Some of the community outreach works (detail).

Grotto Girl was the culmination of my four-week creative residency at MUŻA, during which I worked closely with a range of local communities to explore themes of identity, memory, and belonging. I brought together participants from diverse backgrounds, including SPERO NGO for visually impaired individuals, residents from the Orange Grove Mellieħa Home, relatives from the Safi Dementia Day Centre, MCAST students, collaborators from Alka Ceramics, and members of the public, in a series of artist-led clay workshops. These workshops became a collective act of storytelling and healing through art, with each participant contributing sculptural elements to the final installation.

The resulting exhibition reimagined MUŻA’s 450-year-old central courtyard as a “living grotto”—a symbolic well of memory and subconsciousness—transformed by the hands of the community into a powerful space of reflection and connection.

“From the well of memory, a community rises,” I often said. Grotto Girl was my celebratory love letter to Malta and its people, honouring their stories through hands-on art-making that was healing, expressive, and unifying.

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