Curatorial Team
Sofia Baldi Pighi
Artistic Director
Sofia Baldi Pighi is an independent Italian curator based in Milan.
Since 2017, she has been focusing on the encounter between art, historical and landscape heritage through contemporary art exhibitions, public programs and ad hoc art therapy workshops for public and private institutions.
Sofia Baldi Pighi was part of the curatorial team of the first Italian National Pavilion – Che cosa sogna l’acqua quando dorme? – for the 14th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea, curated by Valentina Buzzi and promoted by the Italian Cultural Institute in Seoul, supported by the Embassy of Italy in Korea, Quadriennale di Roma, and the European Media Art Platform, co-founded by the European Union.
Baldi Pighi is a curator for Una Boccata d’Arte 2023, a contemporary art project spread throughout Italy, promoted by Fondazione Elpis in collaboration with Galleria Continua, with the participation of Threes Productions. Through exhibitions, lectures, and workshops, she has collaborated together with various museum institutions and universities, including Triennale (Milan); MANN Archeological Museum (Napoli); Pilotta Monumental Complex, (Parma), Permanente Museum (Milan); Orientale University (Napoli), Brera Fine Arts Academy (Milan), NABA New Fine Arts Academy (Milan), SwissInstitute (Milan); Virgilio Sienis’ Academy of Art and Gesture (Florence), Order of Architects (Milan). Baldi Pighi has collaborated with various national and international companies to support art projects: Corneliani Spa (founding the Corneliani Art Collection), Confcommercio Lombardia; Repower; A2A; Servizi Italia; AIDDA – Association of Women Business Executives.
She is also the curator of the artistic didactic collective PSICO.LOBO, which fuses psychology and performance and is an active member of the autonomous association Art Workers Italia.
CURATORIAL STATEMENT | STQARRIJA KURATORJALI
Click here to read blog post by Sofia
Nigel Baldacchino
Setup Designer
Nigel Baldacchino is a Maltese design architect and artist. He is currently employed with NOI Studio (Malta) as an architect. His photographic work has been exhibited and published internationally, forming part of The Malta National-Community Art Museum collection and the Valletta Contemporary Foundation. He has led and partaken in several design projects driven by elemental poetic and phenomenological qualities. His artistic practice includes photography, music production, video, poetry, bookmaking, and design. He is part of the Penumbra Foundation & Image Threads Collective’s Long Term Photobook program while also furthering his involvement in the exhibition project ‘those eyes – these eyes – they fade’, initiated together with Bénédicte Blondeau, curated by Anne Immelé.
Click here to read blog post by Nigel
Elisa Carollo
Curator
Elisa Carollo is an Italian art advisor, curator, and USPAP-compliant appraiser based in the US, NYC. Carollo is an advisor for collectors, galleries, and artists and writes about art and its market for international press. With +8 years in the art business, and after her experience with the international art advisory firm Gurr Johns, and a family-run office in Milan, Carollo now works for the Benetton family art foundation, Fondazione Imago Mundi in Treviso, where she advises on international projects and relations. Carollo is the co-director at Swivel Gallery in Brooklyn, NYC, and she is also part of the curatorial and editorial group for Fondazione Quadriennale di Roma. She was part of the curatorial team of the Italian Pavilion at Gwangju Biennale 2023 and recently joined the IKT (International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art).
Click here to read blog post by Elisa
Emma Mattei
Curator
Emma Mattei is a Maltese arts and culture journalist and film programmer. She co-founded Kinemastik NGO (2004, Malta) and is Programme Director at the Kinemastik International Short Film Festival, now in its 19th year. She has co-produced films screened at Visions Du Réel, IFFR, DocLisboa, Tate Modern, Vdrome.org, and V18-Capital of Culture. In 2011, she founded the international collaborative publishing project Uncommon Guide Books, issuing editions in Malta, Stockholm, London, Dubai, and Cairo.
Click here to read blog post by Emma
Organising Bodies
Heritage Malta
Guarding over 8,000 years of history, Heritage Malta is the national agency for museums, conservation practice and cultural heritage.
With a portfolio that encompasses archaeological sites, baroque auberges and palaces, catacombs, forts, natural landscapes and UNESCO-listed neolithic temples, Heritage Malta is the face of the Maltese Islands. More than simply advancing the stock of intellectual and cultural capital, our vocation is to offer a mirror to society through a heritage which is ‘Part of Us‘, because we are our history and this is our cultural identity.
Every generation, monument, artefact, language, specimen and celebration has a story to share. Heritage Malta ensures that these stories are preserved for posterity and are made accessible for everyone, everywhere, to experience and enjoy.
Arts Council Malta
Arts Council Malta is the national agency for development and investment in the cultural and creative sectors. Driven by the commitment to cultural rights, Arts Council Malta invests in the arts to strengthen Malta’s creative and cultural ecology.
MUZA
MUŻA is the National Museum of Art, branded as the Malta National Community Art Museum. The word ‘MUŻA’ is a translation of the Maltese term for ‘inspiration’ and also stands as an acronym for MUŻ(ew Nazzjonali tal-)A(rti), –which means ‘National Museum of Art’. It also refers to the muses, the mythological figures from Classical Antiquity inspiring creativity and, in effect, the etymological source of the word ‘museum’.
MUŻA strives to show the history of the National Collection, and the values that have shaped it over time. The MUŻA project aims to rethink the collection as a source of inspiration for the Maltese community and beyond. The project will keep questioning the relevance of museums and how they remain dynamic and vibrant institutions in this day and age.
MUŻA seeks to adopt and purposely develop a participatory museum model for the arts, with particular reference to its national art museum remit. Community and nation are, by consequence, overlain and traditional museum audiences are rethought into participants and inhabitants.
MUŻA seeks to become a significant community asset promoting social cohesion, intercultural dialogue, creativity and inspiration. It promotes greater participation by the community through a story-based narrative of display and related objects, and utilises a broader range of access tools to experience heritage and culture.
For this purpose, MUŻA is understood as a hybrid of public spaces, galleries and retail facilities equally relevant within one interconnecting weave of services and facilities that define MUŻA as a National Community Art Museum.
