Hobart. Monday, 1.20pm
This is baffling. I look around, but no-one else seems perturbed. People continue to wander from artwork to artwork, heads down, staring at the small screens they’re holding, listening to whatever it is that’s streaming through the headphones they wear.
I’m deep in the bowels of the Museum of Modern and New Art (Mona). And ‘bowel’ is hardly a metaphor; I’ve just seen a poo machine. The staff feed it twice a day, the food gets processed through a series of glass cylinders, and at 2pm everyday the artwork does a foul-smelling poo.
Now, I’m in front of a Egyptian sarcophagus. Well, it isn’t actually a sarcophagus. Even though there is no information displayed about the artworks, I know that sarcophagi are made of stone, the word meaning ‘flesh-eating stone’ in Greek. This is a painted wooden mummy case. And I’ve seen something weird on it.
At Mona, there are no labels or information about the art. All information is on an app you can download to your phone or you can use on one of Mona’s devices you pick up at the entrance. The app knows exactly where you are in the museum. (That’s a good trick, because I don’t where the hell I am.) It delivers information about the artwork in front of you via the device’s screen and headphones.
I can’t stand it.
I mean, at first, I wore the headphones and looked at the screen, learning stuff about each artwork I ventured near – its name, who created it, when – but soon I was spending more time learning about the artwork than actually looking at it. My reality was being determined by information rather than experience.
So, I turned it off.
Taking off the headphones, I entered a strange world of fascinating and frustrating art set in dark rooms dug deep into the ancient rock of Muwinina country. There are people in this eerily silent world, but they’re people separated from each other by their individual cocoons of cyber information.
So, I’m alone with my conundrum: What is Alfred E. Neuman doing on an Egyptian mummy case?
Yes, dear reader, among the hierglyphics on this apparently ancient artifact is the big-eared goofy face that has adorned the cover of Mad magazines since 1955. Among the eagles, owls, spears and snakes that make up a sophisticated system of writing dating from 5000 years ago is a modern-looking cartoon visage looking directly at the reader. (I thought Egyptian art always portrayed faces in profile.)
Maybe the mummy case is a contemporary artwork. Yes. Maybe I have stumbled onto the point the artist is trying to make: Our preconceptions blind us to what is actually there. You look at this artwork, and you think, ‘Oh, Egyptian mummy case. Pretty colours. Lots of mascara. Strange writing.’
And that’s it.
No, it’s not.
Am I the only one to properly look (sans device) at this postmodern piece, and see the dorky face among the hierglyphics? It’s clever thoughtful work, connecting the decline of the Egyptian dynasties with the modern Trump era by employing the Mad anti-hero whose slogan is ‘What, me worry?’ Beautiful. Poignant. I wonder who the artist is. I turn on my device.
Oh. This is the mummy case of Iret-Heru-Ru who lived from 600-525BC.
This isn’t a modern art statement about civilisation’s rush to oblivion, but a two-and-a-half thousand year-old burial box. With a funny face on it…
Well, maybe, 2500 years ago, the artist painting the mummy case of a dead rich bloke in a declining civilisation foresaw the rise of Alfred E. Neuman as leader of a future civiisation, signalling its demise.
Mona is fun.
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