Presented by Mona, Museum of Old and New Art, Mona Foma is a site-specific festival of art, music, “and other stuff” clustered around two of lutruwita/Tasmania’s largest cities: Launceston from 17 to 19 February; and Hobart from 24 to 26 February 2023.
Showcasing the work of 370 artists through an extensive arts program, festival highlights include: Jenni Large’s Body Body Commodity, which explores the commodification of the female body in relation to consumerism and capitalism – five female dancers animate and interact with a mass of pastel foam objects that litter the performance space at Earl Arts Centre in Launceston, “exploiting and embracing their habitat” as the lines between object, body, power, and product blur.
Jenni Large, Body Body Commodity, performance. Photograph: Gabriel Comerford and Jenni Large. Courtesy the artist, Tasdance and Mona Foma, Tasmania
In Anthem Anthem Revolution, at Launceston’s reUNIÓN district, participants battle a table tennis robot to hear a new national song written by local children, an anthem that reflects their hopes and dreams for the country. Neighbouring exhibit, Robin Fox’s Hyperbolic Psychedelic Mind Melting Tunnel of Light is an interactive light installation where visitors can operate the light, sound, and motion controls one person at a time.
In Hobart, Last Messages at Contemporary Art Tasmania sees twelve artists envision “blackened utopias,” existential threats both faced and future, and the general idea of apocalypses. On a lighter note, Pneu at Salamanca Arts Centre uses seaweed-derived products to transform the space into a “speculative vision of a future home,” where a regenerative relationship between humanity and earth (and seaweed) has blossomed. And in the north and south, Chloe Kim beats on the drums for hundreds of hours during the festival.
