No salami

No salami (embroidery) is the ongoing act of reformatting a single cross stitch pattern. The pieces are part of a larger body of work involving reproductions of the Mona Lisa in which she appears blurred, degraded, reconfigured or otherwise obscured. These embroidered images all use the same original pattern, but the stitches are not in their original places. Paper patterns are cut into tiny strips and taped back together, generating new ways to combine all the same threads in all the same quantities. They build on previous experiments using packaged textile kits or patterns, where all the instructions are followed but not necessarily in the right order. Superficially, the work explores the domestication of iconic ‘fine art’ works, using mass produced needlework kits. Beyond this, the series is an exercise in mundane repetition and reproduction, the reduction of a familiar painting into surface pattern and colour, and the incremental corruption of an original image.