Dimensions: 2m x 2m x 1m approx.
Date of the work: 2017
Medium: Plexiglass
Current location: Wings held in Spazju Kreattiv Art Collection,
Other remains of work: held in Artist’s Collection and Private Collections
Exhibition history: VIVA – Valletta International Visual Arts Festival 2017; Trasparenza (2022) severed head exhibited as Ras in-Naħla
*Condition of the main work: Irreparably damaged while being transported from Spazju Kreattiv to Palazzo de la Salle in Valletta in 2017. See also: X’Fadal (minn Naħla) and Niggieża
Naħla was originally commissioned by Norbert Francis Attard on behalf of the Pjazza Teatru Rjal public art programme, which he curated between 2013 and 2016, presenting works by a substantial number of contemporary artists based in Malta during that period. Tabone proposed the placement of a 3m3 three-dimensional transparent plexiglass on top of the turret at the corner of Republic Street and South Street, which is an area included in Renzo Piano’s revision from this period on the remains of the Royal Opera House as part of the entrance to the city of Valletta.
This site-specific art installation by Tabone is based on the idea that the honeybee is an essential ancient dweller of the Maltese islands. Even the name Melitos or Melita, associated so closely with the country, is sometimes interpreted as derived from words relating to the islands as the land of honey. Aspects of bee culture permeate human culture, not only in the Maltese islands but also throughout the world. Indeed, it is a widely held belief that the bee is the key to the human ecosystem and life on Earth, as we know it.
The bee is prevalent in Maltese culture, and this is evidenced by the fact that it is the honeybee that was selected to adorn the 3 mils coin between 1972 and 2006. The honeybee is an underrated Maltese icon. This art installation aims to bring some of this awareness back to public discourse. Parallels between swarms of working bees greeted by a solitary guard bee in the hive to deposit nectar into the honeycombs and the swarms of workers entering the city (through City Gate) each morning were also to be entertained through this work.
The series of public art commissions at Pjazza Teatru Rjal was discontinued after the divergence of vision among senior managers in Malta’s public cultural sector disrupted an installation by Victor Agius in 2015. In the wake of this, the development of Tabone’s work was suspended and subsequently cancelled along with Attard’s public art programme. Up to this point, Tabone had only produced a small-scale model (bozzetto) of this work in transparent plexiglass.
The installation was eventually commissioned for inclusion in the 2017 edition of VIVA – the Valletta International Visual Arts Festival. However, it appeared that the fate of this work was such that it would never come to be presented as intended by the artist. After all the necessary arrangements were made to have a slightly smaller work than the one originally intended in 2016, Naħla was meant to be installed inside a window high up on the western wall of St James Cavalier, enabling it to be viewed from between the two building blocks that Piano has designed to serve as the Malta Parliament. In this location, the artist intended her giant transparent plexiglass bee to be viewed from between the parliament buildings and presented each morning to the hundreds of workers entering the city. This arrangement required access to the parliament grounds to enable the crane that was meant to bring the work up to the intended space. However, at 5am on the morning of the installation, the artist, curator, and their installation team – who believed they had made all the necessary arrangements with senior management at the Malta Parliament – were met by police from parliament who insisted they had orders to halt the installation, ostensibly on health and safety grounds.
To save the site-specific work from immediate oblivion, it was decided that the southern wall of St James Cavalier (which did not require the crane to enter parliament grounds) could provide an adequate location for the work to be shown, even if in a way that was different from what the artist originally intended. Still, this was not the end of the disappointments that came with this art project. Naħla was taken into the St James Cavalier building for storage for several months before it was set to be transported to Palazzo de la Salle, where the Malta Society of Arts had chosen to install it in their inner courtyard, above the replica of Antonio Sciortino’s Les Gavroche at the request of the Society’s President, Adrian Mamo. Unfortunately, Tabone’s Naħla was irreparably damaged while being transported from St James Cavalier to Palazzo de la Salle in late 2017. Parts of the pieces salvaged from Naħla have been developed into other works.
