Among the many colourful trinkets that encrust Ruth Watson’s Keychains and Snowstorms (2021) are several Eiffel Towers. I spy one, a keychain, sitting on the ladder’s eighth rung, and two more sticking out on either side of its base like rooster’s spurs, the distinct spine clockable despite the hundreds of similar cheap souvenirs from around the world also covering the structure, which looks like something fished out of an urban harbour. Mini sombreros, red telephone booths, matryoshka dolls, cowrie shells, clogs, small renderings of landmarks—Colosseum, Golden Gate Bridge, Pyramids, Petronas Tower—all were collected by Watson from friends travelling abroad or in op shops where they’ve been discarded by strangers. She refers to these trinkets as ‘Ambassadors’, an affectionate way of registering the diplomatic work these image-objects do to sustain national mythologies and seduce the international tourist dollar. Snowglobes and keychains are two of the most enduring types of souvenir, and the most successful, sharing an important ability to preserve the world in miniature and in the round, which
is to say to preserve how the tourist perceives it, traversable and collectible. Forget encyclopaedic histories and meta-narratives. Overrated doorstops! We’ve got keychains now, for collecting places on split rings to be jangled as you pull them from your pocket and thumbed through like a rolodex, and snowglobes, making whole planets of single places, small enough to hold in your palm and control the weather. [...]
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