[imagesource: Mona/Charlotte Vignau]

Does art mimic real life or does real life mimic art?

That is the question that has become rather pointed since a recent anti-discrimination complaint case was pitted against an artist who made an exhibition about that exact point at Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (Mona).

Kirsha Kaechele’s installation Ladies Lounge opened in Mona in 2020, permitting entry for women only, who go in to get pampered by male butlers and served champagne while being surrounded by some of the museum’s finest art.

Then, on March 19, the performance piece leaked past the museum walls and into real life when a New South Wales man, Jason Lau, lodged a gender discrimination complaint case against the popular Tasmanian museum, which was upheld by the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

Lau, who visited Mona last April, claims he was denied entry into the Ladies Lounge because of his gender – a contravention of Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Act, per The Guardian.

This made Kaechele really excited, saying that she was an “artist who works in the world and I tend to engage life as a medium”.

“So it was a dream come true for the work to leave the museum and enter the realm of the world – a completely new space,” Kaechele told Guardian Australia on Wednesday. “It was very interesting to have artwork come to life in a courtroom.”

What she means is that men have been granted men-only spaces for centuries. Exhibit A:

Dinner party at the Hotel Astor, 1904
byu/ChampagneCream inOldSchoolCool

Exhibit B:

Appreciated joining @POTUS for meeting with the Freedom Caucus again today. This is it. #PassTheBill pic.twitter.com/XG6lQIy5a6

— Vice President Mike Pence Archived (@VP45) March 23, 2017

In an effort to draw attention to the irony of this situation, an image that almost mocks these sorts of homogenous male gatherings was reproduced by the artist and 25 female supporters, who entered March’s tribunal hearing wearing a uniform of navy business attire – see the header image.

Throughout the day’s proceedings, they engaged in discreet synchronised choreographed movements, including leg crossing, leaning forward together and peering over the top of their spectacles. Apart from the gentle swish of 25 pairs of nylon clad legs crossing in unison, the support party remained silent.

When the proceedings concluded, the troupe exited the tribunal to the Robert Palmer song ‘Simply Irresistible’.

@missingperspectives We are OBSESSED with this story! Kirsha says she is “delighted” to be sued for discrimination #fyp #museum #artgallery #genderequality ♬ original sound – missingperspectives

But it’s not just fun and games. During her defence, Kaechele ran through a timeline of Australian women’s lived experience of discrimination and exclusion, which can also be said for women all over the world. This included being barred from working in the public service sector once married, and receiving lower pay than men for the same work – something MONA’s own management had engaged in up until 10 years ago, the artist pointed out in her evidence.

In fact, a recent experience inspired the artwork. When Kaechele went to a pub on Flinders Island several years ago, she and a girlfriend were advised by male patrons that they would feel “more comfortable” retiring to the ladies’ lounge. She found out that this dynamic still exists, even though Australian women were not allowed to enter public bars up until 1965.

Are you also laughing at the depth of this irony?

While Lau argued that denying men access to some of the museum’s most important works – there is a Sidney Nolan, a Pablo Picasso and a trove of antiquities from Mesopotamia, Central America and Africa in the women-only space – is discriminatory, Kaechele said that was precisely the point.

“The men are experiencing Ladies Lounge, their experience of rejection is the artwork,” she said. “OK, they experience the artwork differently than women, but men are certainly experiencing the artwork as it’s intended.”

Mona’s lawyer Catherine Scott told Guardian Australia the case was an unusual one because the artwork was both a physical entity – a lounge – and a piece of performance art.

“There is the participatory element of allowing women and denying men,” she says.

“So we’re looking at the role that art can play in promoting equal opportunity, and the law doesn’t deal well with that. Mona’s case is that art can be a really powerful medium in promoting equal opportunity by not just experience, but by conversation, and specifically redressing the past exclusion of women.”

Anyway, Pulse Tasmania reported that Lau won the case, with the tribunal giving the museum 28 days to “cease refusing entry to the exhibit known as the Ladies Lounge at the Museum of Old and New Art by persons who do not identify as ladies”.

MONA stated last month in a statement that their lawyers were prepared to fight and take the matter to the Supreme Court if necessary.

[source:guardian]