Artist, surfer and overall badass Mariah Buhagiar may have spent her winter recovering from knee surgery, but this didn’t keep her from staying close to the surf in her own way.
She decided to swap her paintbrushes for an entirely new medium, film, and with surf as her main focus, created Mediterranean Drift (Surfing in Malta), a mini surf documentary based in Malta.
Capturing the stoke in a retro-cool way, she interviewed surfers, including Valerio Cicconi, Lola Schmidt and Braydon Grima amongst others. Her aim was to showcase the sport. “A lot of people do not know you can surf in Malta, so I wanted to show that.”
“The fact that we can surf here is amazing, and if I can go to school in the morning and then surf after, it’s a great lifestyle.”
“Thank god I tore my ACL, as I wouldn’t have found surfing – it’s such a good feeling!”
Mariah pays tribute to the fantastic community, stating how much it has helped her, and highlights a great connection she has built with her sisters of surf and the broader community.
Alongside the documentary, she also started experimenting with a technique based on developing cyanotypes. A cyanotype is a photographic printing process that produces a blue print, specifically a distinctive shade of Prussian blue, on a white background. It’s a contact printing technique where an object or negative is placed on chemically-treated paper, and the exposed areas turn blue when exposed to light. This was inspired by her time in Estonia, encouraging her to try another new method.
“From just developing negative film, one day I went to the bay to collect seaweed and other things to try.” She pushed a boundary, added the element of the sea to her art and created something quite stunning.
A true artist, Mariah just wants to showcase her love for surf. With an open-minded experimental attitude, she’s not afraid to get her hands dirty and try new methods to captivate an audience.
