b. 1997, Malta
Anna Calleja (b.1997) is a Maltese artist. Calleja’s work draws from her personal experience a vision of a world suspended between uncertainty, longing and the distance of memory. Her interest lies in dualities; the tension and dissonance between comfort and melancholy, isolation and connection, love and grief. Calleja’s painting technique is reflective of this in its reliance on a tentative balance between order and disorder in the paint surface.
The images begin from her personal archive; both real and constructed, cataloguing places held as home for a moment. Within her paintings, she connects to the current of art history via a dialog with what came before; she transforms recurring archetypes, catholic and patriarchal motifs within the language of figurative painting and employs them in an analysis of the present.
Calleja studied Fine Art at Falmouth University and has since exhibited internationally in London, Paris, Berlin, New York City, and Dallas. In 2022, she was awarded the Premju Ghal-Arti for Best Young Artist by Arts Council Malta.