Date of the work: 2018/2019
Medium: Plexiglass and indelible ink
Exhibition history: Open site-specific performance installation on limestone structure at Ordinance Street corner with Republic Street, Valletta (2018) and at The Mill, Gabriel Caruana Foundation
(series of 5) *Note: A limited edition of laser etchings have been created by the artist from each item in this series. Some of these are in private collections in Malta and elsewhere.
Spending so much time studying the remains of Malta’s Royal Opera House, first for the proposed installation of Naħla as early as 2015, and finally for the street performance of Rjali in 2018, Tabone needed engage with the site one more time before moving on from it completely. The Royal Opera House in Valletta is one of five sites that the artist used to create her Reverse Nostalgia series developed between 2018 and 2019, exhibited through the Gabriel Caruana Foundation at the Mill in Birkirkara, Malta, in March and April 2019.
How do we deal with loss of identity? Is it similar to loss of history? Remembering a past we never experienced is a fascinating type of nostalgia. Another form of remembering involves a desire to experience realities that have acquired different meanings over time. This is most common in the preservation of remains and particularly evident when dealing with historical buildings or other popular structures that have endured in Malta’s collective memory over time. All this is naturally magnified and amplified through social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter where people’s voices and thoughts have found a means to engage with disappearance and permanence like never
before. Tabone developed the Reverse Nostalgia series of works from these ideas, exploring the fragile durability of outlining what is no longer there in a series of works juxtaposing her perception of the persistence of disappearing sights around the Maltese islands: from City Gate and the Royal Opera House in Valletta to the Azure Window in Gozo. Marking two years since the collapse of the world-famous coastal rock structure at Dwejra, the exhibition hosted by the Gabriel Caruana Foundation featured a reimagining of appropriated picture postcard images from yesteryear with a contemporary twist. The other two sites selected for this series were the Attard Railway Station Bridge, which was removed in the 1930s to make way for cars and trucks, and the Ta’ Ganu Windmill, which was converted into a contemporary art space by Gabriel and Mary Rose Caruana in 1990.
A limited edition of ten framed laser engravings made from each of the five ink drawings on transparent plexiglass was also created for the 2019 exhibition.
