Plaster Cocoon
Rechtstraat 38
The Mona Lisa has often been a target for artists challenging the art historical canon. In Plaster Cocoon, two visual cultures collide as Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic portrait is superimposed onto scenes from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 classic Rear Window.
Renowned for her enigmatic smile, the Mona Lisa is traditionally considered an icon of grace and harmony. In Fiévet’s montage, however, her serene gaze is disrupted by a feverish thermometer, a whirring razor, and Miss Torso’s sultry sways. The Hitchcock connection is deliberate – Rear Window is a film about watching and its consequences. Fiévet extends this narrative by placing the Mona Lisa, long shrouded in mystery and fetishised, within a voyeuristic lens. As her facial expression merges with cinematic imagery, her iconic status wavers.
Plaster Cocoon also interrogates the tension between copying and appropriating images. What remains of an icon when it is endlessly reused? And at what point does an image stop being a reproduction and become a new original?
Thanks to Michel Maes.