Dimensions: 300cm x 135cm x 105cm
Date of the work: 2023
Medium: Inflatable PVC and digital sound
Exhibition history: Prestorjha (2023)
Working on the idea that prehistoric figurines are didactic aides made by women based on their own bodies, Tabone has spent about four years exploring ways to interpret this idea in a contemporary context. She has used clay and other natural materials in her process of learning by doing. She has also taken these explorations to other media, predominantly transparent plexiglass. However, possibly because of the studies she created through line drawings and in clay, the artist has also created a female figure that is a gigantic representation of this human shape. Ninfa is a three-meter-tall inflatable PVC sculpture developed by Tabone in collaboration with the visualization design company Solid Eye. It is based on what was initially created as a 15cm x 7cm x 4.5cm clay figurine in 2021, modelled on the artist’s own body. Through this work, she has come to see that the proportions and dimension on female figurines appear less exaggerated when viewed from the vantage point of someone looking down at her own body. Seen from above, this figure has regular proportions, especially for breasts and hips.
The name of this work is once again playful. This is because the title is not only the Maltese word for nymph (more about that shortly) but also similar to words involving breath or air, essential for the inflation of the large PVC structure. Nymphs are not prehistoric figures. Their earliest appearance is in ancient Greek folklore. They are usually female deities of minor significance, mostly associated with nature. This concept is not too far removed from the notion of mother earth, which is older and therefore better aligned with prehistoric ideas.
Tabone steers clear almost completely of the widely held idea that prehistoric female figurines personify deities, even if not completely refuting this concept. In Not Venus [item 25] she seeks to humanize rather than deify the female figure. In Ninfa she also indirectly addresses the Ġgantija myth, which proposes that giant women built the moon temple in Xagħra, Gozo. Conspicuously, instead of referring to the legendary giants, the title of this work hints anachronistically to another mythical legend held within a cave on the coast of Ogygia, just two kilometres away from Ġgantija.
Data sonification provides sound for the installation. This work of digital sound art is composed by Tabone from the dataset captured on Wikidata through the artist’s work with Heritage Malta’s extensive collection of prehistoric female figurines held in Malta and Gozo. While the first part of this sound recording is deliberately assembled by the artist, the rest of the compostion is generated through the raw data now held within the open dataset on Wikidata relating to this archaeological collection.
*The artist has also offered a limited-edition reproduction of this work through her Magna tal-Arti.
