Two candidacys, one cultural alliance. LPGC’31 and Victoria 2031, the city that will share the European Capital of Culture title with a Spanish city in 2031, are joining forces artistically through their first collaborative project. Maltese urban artists Jason Joe Farrugia and Cynthia Saliba have created two new urban art interventions on the walls of Castillo de Mata, as part of the cooperation between the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Victoria (Gozo) bids for European Capital of Culture 2031.

The artists, from the island of Gozo, have spent  some days in August in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria as part of an artistic residency linked to REBEL WALLS. Urban Stories, one of the most innovative projects developed within the city’s European Capital of Culture bid.

Their participation takes part of the collaboration established between LPGC2031 and Victoria-Gozo 2031, the bid of the city of Victoria, capital of the Maltese island of Gozo and the only Maltese candidate remaining in the final stage of the process to become European Capital of Culture in 2031. That same year, a Spanish city will also hold the title, creating a particularly significant opportunity to build cultural relations between the two candidacys from now on.

The initiative follows a series of meetings between the teams from both cities in recent months, particularly the institutional visit made in July by the Mayor of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Carolina Darias, to Victoria, where she met with the city’s Mayor, Brian Azzopardi, and the Victoria 2031 team.

During that visit, both sides agreed to move forward with artistic exchanges, creator mobility and joint projects between two island territories facing similar challenges within the European context. A reciprocal institutional visit by the Mayor of Victoria to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria is also expected to take place in early September.

From Gozo to Castillo de Mata

As one of the first concrete outcomes of this alliance, Farrugia and Saliba travelled to Gran Canaria to create two new mural interventions at Castillo de Mata, joining REBEL WALLS. Urban Stories, a project that brings together urban artists and local creators and has transformed different walls of the museum into large-scale artworks.

The residency also enabled the Maltese artists to engage with the cultural context of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and with the creative community connected to the project. This exchange component is central to REBEL WALLS, conceived not simply as an exhibition but as a living space for creation and encounter, where mural interventions coexist with activities related to hip-hop, rap, dance, workshops and public gatherings.

Two new island perspectives: from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic

Jason Joe Farrugia is a Maltese visual artist and educator with more than twenty years of experience in art education. His practice moves between creation, research and teaching, with a particular focus on perspective, form and our relationship with space. His work encompasses painting, drawing and mixed media, alongside an extensive career in art education.

His mural intervention at REBEL WALLS reflects on the island marine landscape of the coast surrounding Gran Canaria. Farrugia was particularly struck by the creative activity generated at the museum around different urban art disciplines, promoted by the LPGC’31 bid. His work is also part of the artistic programme planned for Victoria 2031, including an innovative project aimed at bringing artistic activity into a hospital in Gozo.

Cynthia Saliba, meanwhile, has developed an artistic practice closely connected to illustration and graphic and narrative creation. Her work includes illustration for children’s publications, editorial design and character creation, as well as projects conceived to be translated into larger-scale formats and murals. Saliba’s intervention at Castillo de Mata is a personal reflection on the artist’s necessary inward journey during the creative process.

Two islands thinking about Europe from the periphery

The collaboration between Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Victoria-Gozo has particular significance within the European dimension of LPGC2031. Both are island cities geographically situated on the margins of Europe and share challenges and concerns related to insularity, mobility, connectivity, identity, heritage, and the relationship between territory and culture.

The alliance allows the two bids to work together from the present, turning the journey towards 2031 into an opportunity to generate real projects, facilitate artist mobility and build relationships between their respective cultural ecosystems.

The collaboration also has a historical dimension. Relations between Malta and Gran Canaria date back several centuries and have left a visible mark on Las Palmas de Gran Canaria through the presence of Maltese merchants who settled in the city during the 18th and 19th centuries. Their legacy remains visible, among other places, in Calle Malteses, next to the historic district of Triana.

The candidacy as a platform for international cooperation

The residency of Jason Joe Farrugia and Cynthia Saliba is therefore part of LPGC2031’s internationalisation strategy, which sees the bid not only as the preparation of a programme for 2031, but as an opportunity to start building lasting cultural relations with European cities, institutions, artists and communities today.

The exchange with Victoria 2031 is a concrete example of this approach: two European Capital of Culture 2031 bids turning the competition itself into a space for cooperation and using culture to connect two island and peripheral territories.

In this context, REBEL WALLS serves as a first laboratory for collaboration. Both bids intend to continue exploring new opportunities over the coming years for reciprocal residencies, artist mobility, contemporary creation projects and cultural cooperation, generating links that can extend beyond the selection process itself and endure over time.