What does it mean to make art in a small state like Malta? Sara Whyatt speaks with Rachelle Bezzina, artist, writer and activist, about artistic freedom, funding, and the quiet mechanisms of institutional power. As she puts it: ” The system lacks a healthy distance between art, politics, and power.”
I want to start with funding, since it seems to shape so much of what artists feel able to do. How have funding criteria or institutional expectations affected your artistic practice?
Through youth agencies, I started attending talks and meetings where people shared information about funding opportunities and that’s how I discovered a fund called Artivisti, specifically designed for artists and activists. I applied and was selected, but soon after I suspect the funding body discovered the tone of my work, it became difficult for me to receive the first percentage of the fund. I am a multidisciplinary artist and I’ve found that funding agencies tend to be more lenient when it comes to visual arts than they are with music, especially in genres like rap, which are still often misunderstood or undervalued.
And beyond your own experience, have you also seen these pressures affect other artists around you?
Many funds include questions like “How does your research project relate to Arts Council Malta’s long-term vision and mission?” which is fine, but while alignment can clarify public value, it can also nudge proposals toward preset narratives rather than artistic intent.
There’s a kind of self-censorship as I notice correcting myself in the way I frame situations and through the words I choose to describe something. I’ve learned how to frame things, including which words to use or avoid in an application, ensuring the proposal doesn’t raise unnecessary flags. But sometimes it doesn’t even come down to the wording. From previous experiences, once they see that you’ve ever been outspoken or critical about something the government did, your name alone can put you on an informal “no list.”
“Art isn’t directly censored, but rather shaped through subtler mechanisms: who gets invited, who gets funded, and who doesn’t.”
I want to stay with Malta more broadly for a moment. What does artistic freedom feel like in Malta’s current funding climate?
From my perspective as an artist working in Malta, artistic freedom often exists in tension with the state’s funding structures. Since Malta is a small country, its cultural landscape is deeply entwined with politics. People know each other, sit on multiple boards and often shift between administrative and artistic roles. This closeness creates an environment where artistic freedom isn’t directly censored, but rather shaped through subtler mechanisms: who gets invited, who gets funded, and who doesn’t. It’s not always about the quality of work, but about alignment, reputation, and tone.
Over the past few years, I’ve noticed a shift in how cultural funding operates. On paper, there’s been a move towards transparency and strategy with frameworks, visions, and long-term plans that look good in reports. But in practice, these often come with expectations that artists tailor their proposals to fit pre-defined narratives of “national identity,” “community well-being,” or “international visibility.” These aren’t inherently bad aims, but they can flatten nuance and discourage work that is messy, critical, or uncomfortable.
“There’s a growing generation of artists and curators who are aware of this imbalance and are actively creating alternative structures.”
What, for you, is most troubling about the way the system currently operates?
What concerns me most is how the funding ecosystem has started to mirror the country’s broader culture of clientelism. The same small circle of decision-makers appears across institutions, and as a result, the system lacks a healthy distance between art, politics, and power. Boards are government-appointed, and when disagreements arise, entire boards can be replaced. There’s little transparency as minutes of meetings are not made public, and rumours often fill the gaps where accountability should be. This makes it difficult to trust that decisions are made on merit rather than affiliation.
At the same time, there’s a growing generation of artists and curators who are aware of this imbalance and are actively creating alternative structures: collectives, self-organised exhibitions, pop-up residencies, and small-scale collaborations that bypass traditional institutions. This gives me hope. However, Malta’s cultural ecosystem still operates in a way that rewards compliance and polite diplomacy over artistic risk. Artistic freedom exists and survives in the spaces we carve out for ourselves, often despite the system, rather than because of it.
I want to open this out a little. Across Europe, how do you see funding shaping cultural discourse and where do you see artists finding ways around those pressures?
The danger is that art risks becoming instrumentalised serving the rhetoric of soft power rather than existing as a space for genuine experimentation, dissent, or contradiction. Across Europe, I’ve seen artists, curators, and collectives reimagining how to work within or around these systems: setting up self-organised residencies, peer-to-peer funding schemes, and community-supported practices that prioritise solidarity over competition.
“Financial independence remains one of the strongest forms of artistic freedom, though it’s rarely absolute.”
That raises the question of independence. How important is financial independence to artistic freedom?
Financial independence remains one of the strongest forms of artistic freedom, though it’s rarely absolute. Complete detachment from funding structures is difficult, especially in smaller countries like Malta, where opportunities are limited and the state plays such a dominant role in the cultural economy. However, diversification whether through European funding, or even commercial strategies that align with one’s ethics can create breathing room.
To end on the question of possibility, what would real support for artistic freedom look like, in Malta and across Europe?
True independence in funding means separating strategy, evaluation, and implementation from political or personal influence. Evaluation panels should be diverse not only in terms of discipline or gender, but also in social background and ideological approach so that artists do not feel they must write in a certain language or tone to be understood or approved. Currently, many artists craft proposals not according to what they want to create, but rather according to how they think evaluators perceive them. That distortion already limits artistic freedom before a single work is made.
Meaningful support could mean creating safe spaces for exchange between artists who experience different forms of censorship under the radar or explicit and connecting them with legal, psychological, and financial resources. It could also mean gathering and publishing anonymous testimonies about institutional pressure to make visible what often goes unsaid. If artists feel less alone about this, they would name the problem more.
At a European level, institutions should prioritise transparency and accountability mechanisms within their national cultural partners. European institutions also have the power to strengthen transnational networks that bypass national gatekeepers such as direct application routes, artist-led funding exchanges, and collaborative platforms where resources are shared laterally rather than filtered vertically.
