Gilbert Calleja

When I was a kid, I'd tell my mother that I wanted to become an artist. I don't think she took me seriously back then, because this didn't seem like a realistic career (it still doesn't). I loved drawing a lot as a kid, then as a teenager I realised that I could express my inner 'self' in words too.

Mark Mangion has taken it upon himself to promote the contemporary visual arts in Malta. He has worked with innumerable local and foreign artists and established himself as one of the leading participants in the contemporary scene.

Good weather, stability and warm- hearted people. All sell well with the tourists but how do young Maltese people live? What do they make out of living on a tiny Euro-Med island with ambitions of becoming an international communications hub? How does it feel to be a young person living in densely populated Malta today?

Work and money seem to be the number one preoccupation of most of the Maltese between twenty to thirty years of age. Subsistence, precarious employment and living up to one’s expectations are however only part of the complexities which define youths in present day Malta. Relationships, single-parenthood, immigration and education are still very much on the agenda.