MONA LISA MUJI

‘Imagine a painting that smiles
just once in a billion years.’
— Yoko Ono

Mona Lisa Muji is a series of QR codes made from hundreds of tiles of LEGO, and each code, when translated by a cellphone, reveals a surprise for the viewer — an invitation: SMILE. La Gioconda by Leonardo Da Vinci depicts the smile of Lisa Gherardini (otherwise known as Mona Lisa), a ‘jocund’ mother, whose grin calls to mind the enigma of a sphinx who knows a secret that no one else knows. While the images from Mona Lisa Muji refer to the cryptic quality of this painting from the Renaissance, the QR codes also take their inspiration from Film No. 5, entitled Smile, by Yoko Ono, whose movie attenuates an act of grinning by John Lennon, extending his smile into a slowed action that takes almost an hour to perform. Each LEGO work strives to induce delight in viewers, curious enough to interact with it when using their cameras to decode it.