Kristina Borg employs an interdisciplinary artistic practice that focuses on socio-political issues in urban-collective spaces. Her research strives to create projects involving experiential processes through which she seeks to relate and enter into direct dialogue with the community and/or the place. Currently works as a freelance artist and art educator and collaborates in a number of projects as curator, exhibition designer and project manager.

During the residency, Borg worked on a series of prints that illustrated her upcoming book publication, featuring a narrative that forms part of the long-term project No Man’s Land. This book publication is indeed a continuation of No Man’s Land—a project that was commissioned as part of the exhibition ‘Dal-Baħar Madwarha’ (The Island is what the Sea Surrounds), curated by Maren Richter for Valletta European Capital of Culture 2018. The project questioned the accessibility to the seashore in Malta’s central harbour areas.

The final work included an on-site experience at sea: performative electric-boat trips during which a narrative, written by Borg herself, was interpreted live by a performer. The narrative includes a mix of fantasy and reality, and finds inspiration in a number of conversations held with the locals. The next phase of this long-term project is to publish the narrative in book format. This will, on the one hand, give the stories back to the communities, and, on the other hand, it will activate and continue a public debate on the contested terms and spaces presented in the narrative. The series of prints done at ´ace will accompany and illustrate these stories.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Kristina Borg is a freelance visual and socially engaged artist and an art educator/lecturer.  In her interdisciplinary research-practice she spends time integrating into specific communities and devotes her attention to relationships between people. In dialogue with the community and/or the place, her work focuses on the creation of projects that involve experiential processes relating to socio-political issues in urban-collective spaces.

Kristina is currently leading an artistic community project in collaboration with the University of Malta as part of the European project AMASS – Acting on the Margins: Arts as Social Sculpture, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. As part of the Valletta 2018 European Capital of Culture programme, Kristina managed the community project Naqsam il-MUŻA – with the goal of connecting the local communities to the national art collection. She was also one of the participating artists of the Dal-Baħar Madwarha (The island is what the sea surrounds) exhibition, the major visual arts exhibition of the Valletta 2018 programme.

Her works have been exhibited in Malta, Milan, Salerno, Perugia, Munich, Dusseldorf, Vienna, Vorarlberg, Leeuwarden, Haarlem, Brussels, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. In 2014 Kristina placed first in the 3rd edition of Divergent Thinkers-Malta. In 2020 her collaborative project Nimxu Mixja (Let’s take a walk) was awarded Arts Council Malta’s Premju għall-Arti (Art Award) as ‘Best project in the community’ and nominated as ‘Best work for young audiences’. She is also a fellow of the Salzburg Global Forum after being selected to participate as a Maltese representative in the Salzburg Global Forum for Young Cultural Innovators in 2017.