Juliet Darling: Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa

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Mona Lisa is a video artwork about waiting. It looks at the intrinsic relationship between waiting and looking at a work of art; a waiting to receive, a waiting in order to let the work emerge on its own terms.

We are not watching killing time, boredom, passing time; we are witnessing a decision, a commitment, a simple humble act.

In the scrum of seething bodies busily filming the painting or themselves with their cameras, we catch a glimpse of a person focused and absorbed, who stands, in a sense, unprotected, and who perhaps is in a state not dissimilar to La Gioconda herself. Leonardo’s highest aim, he said, was to ‘depict the state of man’s soul’. Not a momentary emotional state but man’s inner life. When we watch these people who have made a choice to wait, we too can feel that they are in contact with their souls.

Juliet Darling is represented by Roslyn Oxley Gallery, Sydney.

Exhibited in CCP’s Projection Window