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The Monas

Every Mona Lisa you’ve ever seen is the same woman. These aren’t.

Leonardo painted Lisa Gherardini, and five hundred years of copies, parodies and posters have kept her face exactly where he left it. Duchamp gave her a mustache and Warhol printed her over and over, and she was still Lisa every time.

The Monas keep what people recognize: MONA across the top, LISA across the bottom, a gold frame around the whole thing. The woman in the middle changes. Each design is somebody else, mostly faces from the last hundred years that more of us actually grew up with.

How they’re made

Each design starts as a stencil, sprayed onto found board. The frames come from thrift stores, so they rarely match. L.H.O.O.Q. gets hand-lettered on the bottom rail, and the back gets a QR code and a certificate of authenticity. There are several copies of each design, and every copy is numbered.

Half a piece

A Mona on a wall is only half done. Whoever takes it home finishes it and ends up on the label next to me, which is the collaboration this whole project runs on. If you’re holding one, that blank space on the label is yours.

Prototype

The prototype Mona: a stenciled comic-book woman with four startled eyes, in a wavy gold frame

The one that started it. A comic-book face with four eyes, a wavy gold frame from a thrift store, and L.H.O.O.Q. on the bottom rail.

It went up on a cinder-block wall and was gone within a day. Everything after it is built on what that one proved: people will take it.

Series One

Register your MonaRegistration opens soon.

Yours has a certificate of authenticity attached to the back. Keep it with the piece, and please don’t post it online.