Official Launch of ‘Grotto Girl’ Exhibition by Louisa Chircop This Wednesday
MUŻA, Malta’s National Community Art Museum, is pleased to announce the official opening of Grotto Girl, an artist-led residency and community outreach project by Louisa Chircop, taking place on Wednesday, 11 June 2025 at 6:30 pm.
Grotto Girl is the culmination of a four-week creative residency during which Chircop worked closely with a range of local communities to explore themes of identity, memory, and belonging. The project brought together participants from diverse backgrounds, including SPERO NGO for the visually impaired individuals from, residents from the Orange Grove Mellieha Home, Safi Dementia Day Centre relatives, MCAST students and collaborators from Alka Ceramics, as well as members of the public, in a series of artist-led clay workshops. These workshops served as a collective act of storytelling and healing through art, with each participant contributing sculptural elements to the final installation.
Photo Credit: Henry Zammit Cordina
The resulting exhibition reimagines 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,” says Chircop. “Grotto Girl is a celebratory love letter to Malta and its people, honouring their stories through hands-on art-making that is healing, expressive, and unifying.”
As the first artist to conceptually and physically activate MUŻA’s historic courtyard well, Chircop merges psychoanalytic and feminist aesthetics with Maltese craft traditions, offering an emotionally resonant experience that invites visitors to engage with Malta’s cultural heritage in new ways.
Born in Sydney, Australia, Chircop is the granddaughter of Maltese WWII immigrants. Her return to Malta for this residency underscores a personal journey of reconnection and cultural reawakening.
The opening event on 11 June will serve not only as the unveiling of the exhibition but as a celebration of community, creativity, and shared cultural memory.
