Memento Mori 2020
2020 Alberto Favaro
Dance of death in contemporary interiors.
Collage, 2020-2021
Various Direct mail advertisement "Magazines +
the Dance of death by Hans Holbein.
Short description
Created during the COVID-19 lockdown, using the only publications that still reached the artist by post—real estate promotional magazines—this work reimagines Holbin’s Dance of Death in its entirety. The medieval allegory is reconstructed through the glossy pages of contemporary consumerism, placing the specter of death amidst the domestic fantasies of luxury living.
At the heart of this installation lies a reflection on control: specifically, the desire to control death through its very representation. The tradition of the memento mori—“remember you must die”—has long served as a tool to master mortality, not through denial, but by confronting it head-on. To depict death is to domesticate it, to make it familiar and bearable. In visualizing the inevitable, a place within the realm of thought and speech is granted to it, asserting mental and symbolic control over what remains physically uncontrollable.
Death walks again—not in cathedrals or plague chronicles, but through glossy real estate brochures promising immortality through property. These aspirational homes, sold to a privileged few, become the surreal stage for a drama as old as humanity: the illusion of safety, permanence, and escape from the inevitable.
The work functions not only as a memento mori, but as a sharp social critique of Malta’s overheated real estate market and the deeper inequalities it mirrors.
Work displayed at Alberto Favaro's solo exhibition -PROTECT ME- at Muza (National Museum of Art), Valletta 2025.
and
Published by Spaziogamma, “Fantastic Cosmos” catalogue 2021