This installation or performance work puts my own earlier film of the Mona Lisa 1973 through another stage of transformation my own irretrievable self of some 34 years ago is now also part of the subject I first saw the actual Mona Lisa when I was about thirteen Of course I had seen dozens of reproductions in books and postcards by then and the popular mythology of the enigmatic smile was already well engrained in my mind My strongest impression as I recall was how small and unsurprising it was a heavily protected cultural icon no longer really a picture and I was much more excited by the painting of the distant landscape than by the face My own version of la Giaconda was never an homage nor like Marcel Duchamps LHOOQ an attack on its cultural power Instead it came from a fascination with change and transformation maybe also with arbitrary appropriation Malcolm Le Grice
