In its endeavors to promote intangible heritage, the Ethnography Section within Heritage Malta will be setting up a temporary exhibition of miniatures of Parochial Festa Processional Statues. This display will be inaugurated on Friday 11 February and will remain open for public viewing at the National Museum of Ethnography, the Inquisitor’s Palace in Birgu until Sunday 3 April.

Local religious festas today are much more than colourful celebrations. They are a high watermark of a predominant religious society which gathers to manifest and publicly express time-honoured cults and devotions. A delicate balance between the secular and the religious is hardly distinguishable due to a strong popular input rich in ethnographic value. Religious feasts are above all precious cultural carriers of ethnic identity and intangible heritage ranging from religious beliefs, pompous sermons and traditions, to music, food, pyrotechnics and the arts. All this and more is what the Ethnography Section within Heritage Malta has from last year been trying to convey through a number of initiatives, including this exhibition.

It is in this light that local organizations and the general public are being invited to contribute by loaning miniature copies (which may include a pedestal and bradella) of the processional statutes of Malta and Gozo. Heritage Malta will try to represent all local parochial devotions, yet this depends on the collaboration of the public.

Those wishing to collaborate can forward an e-mail to Kenneth Cassar on kenneth.b.cassar@gov.mt or call 21 663 731; and Mario Coleiro on mario.coleiro@gov.mt or 23954 316.

Photograph courtesy of Kenneth Zammit Tabona.

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