Mon Alice

Mon Alice is a small plastic sculpture measuring a few centimeters (8 x 4 x 3 cm); it is a maquette for a larger sculpture designed by Echaurren in 2018.
The sculpture represents Alice in Wonderland in the Disney version, the one now ingrained in the collective imagination of adults and children alike. To this small sculpture, the artist has painted in ink on the face two mustaches and a slight stubble.
Right from the start the work recalls the famous L.H.O.O.Q. the rectified ready-made made in 1919 by Duchamp that depicts Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa with a fine mustache and a goatee drawn on her face by the French artist. A game of ambiguity is hidden in both works. Indeed, both Mona Lisa and Alice change identities by adopting elements typical of the male sphere, Echaurren as Duchamp adopts a well-known figure, an icon of contemporaneity to make changes dictated by a simple and essential gesture. If Duchamp works on language through the play on words in the title (L.H.O.O.Q. pronounced in French sounds like Elle a chaud au cul - She is hot in the ass), Echaurren always works through a written part but only mentioning Leonardo's work in the title of the work, Mon Alice instead of Mona Lisa. The medium clearly changes from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, but Echaurren's intentions would seem to be the same as those that moved the French artist.
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