Dimensions: Handheld spherical glass jars with plastic screw-on lids
Date of the work: 2011 Medium: Glass jars, wax, silicon, and indelible ink
Exhibition history: Strada Stretta – Splendid Lounge Opening (2011); Trasparenza (2022)
Souvenir, which Tabone produced for the reopening of the Splendid Hotel as an art venue at 74 Strait Street in Valletta in April 2011 by Fondazzjoni Temi Zammit.
Here she plays on the popular history of Malta’s red-light district to produce what she refers to as souvenirs of pain on display in a jar. These are intended to appear as if they were aborted human fetuses. She chose to display these “souvenirs” in an old mahogany display case, which she found abandoned within the building. In this way, the work’s site-specific dynamics are heightened. The display case included a large oval mirror attached to its upper part, on which the artist wrote in red acrylic paint, simulating lipstick scribbles on the mirror.
“Beauty is ever to the lonely mind a shadow fleeting; she is never plain. She is a visitor who leaves behind the gift of grief, the souvenir of pain.”
Christopher Morley
At the Splendid exhibition, the artist invited visitors to reach gently inside the jars with their index finger to attest the veracity of the contents by directly touching the objects. In most cases, they simply stained their finger with indelible red ink and didn’t really notice until later, owing to the dimly lit environment at the Splendid. One visitor, however, squealed in horror and reported in the Times of Malta that she didn’t “have the stomach for such displays.” Some even assumed, wrongly, that these were the artist’s own aborted fetuses.
