Artists Trevor Borg and Vince Briffa have been invited by the curatorial team of the (Under)Mining Art Research Project to research and create a work for the traditional mining village of Kalavasos in Cyprus, engaging with its mining heritage, community, and landscape.

Originating from an island where there is no traditional mineral mining activity, Borg and Briffa look at a series of similar excavation activities of the island’s rock structure in Malta and Gozo as thematic fora multi-media installation consisting of video and 3d-scanned data.

The Maltese artists’ work is site-specific, designed for the chosen exhibition site of the Old Oil Mill in Kalavasos. Entitled Taħt–Fuq, the installation reflects on the dual realities of these mining activities, namely the resulting scarring of the landscape and the environmental fallout, as well as on the awesome allure that these underground tunnels, catacomb sand war shelters have on us.

The project focuses on transporting and re-dimensioning the visual and aural experience of being underground, contextualising historically, sociologically and also philosophically, through multi-media technology. The artists are collaborating on the acquisition and interpretation of scanned data with University of Malta colleagues Saviour Formosa and Fabrizio Cali.

The project is in collaboration with the Cyprus Deputy Ministry of Culture, Cyprus University of Technology, Cut Contemporary Fine Arts Lab, Department of Digital Arts, University of Malta, Wignacourt Museum in Rabat, Heritage Malta and SAGIS. It is partly funded by the Arts Council Malta’s International Cultural Exchanges Scheme.