In the latest instalment of the Ladies Lounge saga at Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), curator Kirsha Kaechele’s has revealed she faked a number of Picasso paintings hanging in the gallery’s new ladies toilets, established in response to the forced closure of the Ladies Lounge earlier this year. This entire saga is perhaps the most effective piece of performance art I’ve seen since Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece of 1964 – a work hailed as being the Titanic of performance pieces. In it, Ono sits, as members of the public are invited to approach and cut off pieces of her clothes.
As was the case with Cut Piece, the public’s reaction to Kaechele has been intense. Unlike Ono, however, Kaechele’s performance has lasted for months and has engaged and scandalised many more people, garnering worldwide attention. The very first stage of this serialised event was Kaechele’s creation of the Ladies Lounge .
In this space, women could have high tea, admire great art and be served by attractive, adoring male butlers. The butlers had to be young, handsome and dressed to be of service to the ladies. In Kaechele’s own words : They are the only men allowed in the Ladies Lounge, and that is because they live to serve women.
They attend to our every desire and shower us with praise and affection (in chivalry — the unequal rights component of the reparations equation). And champagne. They also massage us.
So when a man, Jason Lau, complained about being denied access on acco.
