Spaces of Encounter
Alongside creative health programmes, Curare Studio develops exhibitions, installations and participatory environments that invite reflection, dialogue and connection. By creating environments where people can encounter themselves, others and the world differently we help contain and support what new meaning needs to emerge.
Working across healthcare, cultural and public contexts, these projects explore how space itself can influence the way people feel, relate and engage with one another. Whether within a hospital, a workplace, a cultural institution or a festival setting, each environment is designed to support meaningful encounters between people, ideas and lived experience.
Environments for Connection
Therapeutic Environments
Deep Shelter is a long-term creative health and therapeutic environment initiative exploring how art, sensory design and curatorial practice can contribute to spaces of care.
Developed within Sir Anthony Mamo Oncology Centre, Mater Dei Hospital, Malta, the project brings together artists, healthcare professionals, researchers and patients to investigate how creative interventions can can transform the experience of clinical environments. Through audiovisual installations, sensory experiences, environmental artworks and participatory programmes, the project explored how spaces can support reflection, reduce anxiety and foster emotional wellbeing.
At its core, Deep Shelter asks a simple but important question:
How might healthcare environments move beyond function to become spaces that also support human experience, connection and care?
A major milestone of the initiative was the symposium Curating the Hospital Space (2017), which brought together artists, researchers and healthcare practitioners to discuss the role of aesthetics, care and environment within contemporary healthcare settings
How can art help create therapeutic spaces where people feel more held, more connected?
This 3 year residency was supported by Valletta 2018, City of Culture.
Sir Anthony Mamo Oncology Centre, SAMOC, Mater Dei Hospital, Malta
Arts, Health & Therapeutic Environments (2016 - 2020)
The initiative included:
artist residencies within the hospital environment
site-specific installations and environmental redesign strategies
digital visual narratives and immersive audiovisual works
sensory workshops using storytelling, sound, music, poetry and reflection
interdisciplinary collaborations with local and international artists
donated artworks integrated into therapy rooms, corridors and communal spaces
Deep Shelter was awarded Best Project in the Community at the Malta Arts Awards and continues to contribute to ongoing national discussions surrounding arts, wellbeing and cultural-health methodologies.
Work Environments
Humanity at War: Reflections (2022)
A photographic exhibition exploring the human cost of conflict through the powerful documentary work of photojournalists Darrin Zammit Lupi and Heidi Levine.
The exhibition explored empathy, witnessing and collective responsibility through images documenting displacement, survival and resilience.
The exhibition asked: What happens when we truly allow ourselves to look and witness?
Pandemic: Survival, Art & New Action (2021)
A collective exhibition curated during the aftermath of the global pandemic, exploring how artistic practice became a way of processing uncertainty, isolation, resilience and social transformation.
The exhibition brought together established and emerging artists working across painting, photography, sculpture, digital art, printmaking and mixed media.
At the heart of the exhibition was the idea that art exists in the space between survival and action.
Longing & Belonging (2019)
a collective exhibition bringing together over 40 works by 18 local and international artists residing in Malta, exploring the deeply human desire for connection, safety, love and belonging.
Moving between portraiture, abstraction and landscape, the exhibition reflected on the emotional spaces we carry within us: the longing to be seen, to be understood and to feel held through moments of vulnerability and uncertainty.
Malta Enterprise CSR Exhibitions (2019-2022)
Cultural & Participatory Environments
Fjamma: Every Child a Guardian of Nature
A participatory exhibition environment created for ŻiguŻajg Festival, exploring how immersive storytelling and sensory design can support learning, imagination and connection with the natural world.
Inspired by Anna Grima's HEY LISTEN storyworld, the project brought together contemporary art, movement, sound, light and tactile experiences to create a series of interactive nature-based environments. Designed in collaboration with artists, educators and children, the exhibition invited visitors to engage through exploration, play and embodied participation.
At its heart, Fjamma explored how cultural environments can nurture creativity, emotional awareness and a sense of belonging while placing children's voices at the centre of the experience.
The storytelling series HEY LISTEN© is part of a transmedia storytelling project adapted for children aged 6-10 from Anna Grima’s historical fiction novel Tahaya: Tales of the Tal-Qadi Stone©.
ŻiguŻajg 2025
Contact
+35679734773
curarestudio.com
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