Dimensions: 46.6cm x 59cm x 28cm
Date of the work: 2020
Medium: Plexiglass
Exhibition history: Art+Feminism (2020); Prestorjha (2023)
Part of the artist’s research process for her PreHerstory series, included close observation of relevant artefacts held by Heritage Malta and in other collections around the world. This led Tabone to observe that Neolithic women may have had a rather broad understanding of their body types and life cycles. A particular example of these prehistoric figurines depicts women going through pregnancy. On closer inspection, it is evident that some of the objects, which are now housed in museums, show different stages and specific aspects of pregnancy, such as the way their arms and hands are placed, or their sitting posture, whether slouching completely, pulling themselves upwards, accentuating the curve of their back as far as possible, or distributing their entire body weight across both hips.
Tabone proposes that only women who have experienced such things in their own bodies can convey this level of detailed information about the human body through art. There are academic arguments to be made for and against this point of view, but from an artistic perspective it is a very useful thing for her work to position herself so clearly as she explores the female figure in prehistoric figurines. Through this first phase of her own artistic creation
around these concepts, she focuses on some of the ways she believes that prehistoric women expressed themselves creatively in the process of teaching others within their community about their life experiences as women.
In Ġismi the artist presents a study of her own torso as it changes every month, during a period of five menstrual cycles. This transparent plexiglass structure is shaped on her own body as she experiences the corporal cycles that make her physical appearance change on a periodic basis. The individual layers of plexiglass used to construct the work emulate the lines found on some prehistoric figurines, which can be interpreted as marking the passing months.
