The Mona Lisa Project is a visual art collaborative project which includes elements of performance, historical reflection and cultural commentary on art and the historical imagery of gender perception. It is based on an exchange between photographer Rino Pizzi and 16 women artists who specialize in different media and disciplines. The project involves the development of a series of works inspired by the image and cultural relevance of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa portrait, focusing primarily on the subject’s celebrated smile. The artists/sitters decided the setting and context of the portrait--clothing, environment, and more. The main objective of the project is that of providing a reflection on a wide range of topics in contemporary art production and representation, inviting women artists to embody an established icon about femininity, which is first produced as a portrait by a male photographer, and then re-appropriated through each artist’s own aesthetic vision and experience.

The project is currently developing along three different stages, and will be discussed through different media and events, including updates on this website. An exhibition is being planned tentatively before the end of the year, but no final arrangements have been made yet. A catalogue will also be published with an introduction by Prof. Janis Bergman-Carton, Chair of the Art History department at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

The first stage was a rehearsal period, when the artists practiced the smile of Mona Lisa as closely as possible to the original image, and occasionally produced small documents (sketches, snapshots) of body postures, locations, imagery, and the like. In the second stage, the artists posed, enacting the Mona Lisa smile, for photographer Rino Pizzi. The images were printed on a variety of media which best suit each artist’s techniques. The prints were given to the participants who are currently working, with no restrictions, on the photographic portrait to produce the final artwork, and complete it by October.

NEW! The Mona Lisa Project will be shown at the Austin Museum of Art starting June 4 2011. More details will be posted here soon.

                                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                                               

please click on each artist’s name for details