Raphael Vella

Background

About Raphael Vella

Raphael Vella is a Professor of Art Education and Socially Engaged Art at the Faculty of Education, University of Malta. His research interests include socially engaged practices in contemporary art and issues of sustainability in art education. He has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and his books include Artist-Teachers in Context: International Dialogues (Sense, 2016), Art – Ethics – Education, co-edited with C-P. Buschkühle and D. Atkinson (2020, Brill/Sense) and Documents of Socially Engaged Art, co-edited with M. Sarantou (2021, InSEA). He has also been active as an artist since the 1980s and as a curator since the early In 2014 he conceived the Valletta International Visual Arts festival (VIVA) and directed the first two editions (2014, 2015). His artistic work has been shown in many exhibitions in different countries, including Italy, Malta, Germany, France, the UK, the Netherlands, Argentina, the US, Canada, Japan and New Zealand. In 2017, he was selected as the co-curator (with Bettina Hutschek) of the Malta Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2017. He was selected to participate as an artist in the first edition of the Malta Biennale in Valletta.