Biography

Diellza Ilgner is a German Malta-based transdisciplinary performance artist working across theatre, multimedia, and audience-engaged art. Her work explores social themes such as migration, disability and environmental urgency. As co-founder of ConsciousArtDuo and Maghna, Diellza merges art therapy approaches with activism, developing inclusive methodologies that welcome community voices and challenge dominant narratives. Her performances frequently involve collaboration with underrepresented groups and site-specific contexts, using storytelling, movement, and language. She has written, directed, and performed numerous original works, including BLACKOUT, examining media addiction and data surveillance; @dd_icted, addressing AI and social isolation; and Hurray Our World is Ending!, exploring paralysis in an overwhelmed world.

Ilgner holds a BA (Hons) in Performing Arts (First Class) from MCAST Institute for the Creative Arts. Her acting credits include Up In the Clouds at ŻiguŻajg Festival, the German TV series In aller Freundschaft, and Amazon Prime's Back to the 90s. She has presented work at Spazju Kreattiv (Malta), Neues Schauspiel Leipzig (Germany), and Refugee Week Malta. She serves on the CRPD advisory board and participated in Arts Council Malta's Artivisti programme. Ilgner continues developing work across Malta, Germany, and Ireland.

Artistic project

IDENTITÀ is a 25-minute performance for seven performers exploring migration, memory, and the experience of waiting between two places. The piece is set in a simple yet charged situation: seven people stand in a line outside Identità, the Maltese public office where migrants apply for documents. They wait to be called by an officer whose distant, monotone voice structures the space. On the surface, very little happens, only waiting.

Yet within this stillness, inner worlds emerge. Each performer wears an identical coat. When one begins to recall something left behind a village, a family ritual, olive harvesting in Tunisia, a moment of loss or joy, they remove their coat, revealing a traditional costume or personal element beneath. Gradually, the others follow, transforming the line into a shared memory. Through movement, gesture, and fragments of spoken text, the group briefly reconstructs pieces of a past life.

Just as suddenly, the coats return. The line reforms. “Next.” The bureaucracy resumes.

Originally developed during my university dissertation, I now propose a new phase adapting IDENTITÀ for public space, placing the waiting line in streets, squares, or outside institutions, where themes of migration and waiting already resonate.

Format: performance

Size of audience: 10-100 people 

Specific location: in a city, crowded places

Timing/duration: 15 to 20 minutes