[dentifier] K2026-007

Phantasia 3 – kiss me belongs to a series of five compositions in which Mona Filleul portrays close friends as personal icons, linking each to elements drawn from pop culture, manga and anime. Here, a figure appears to be reading a book while holding a doll, enclosed within a frame of concrete and metal profiles. Around the figure cluster a set of references: My Melody from Hello Kitty, a magic wand from the manga Sailor Moon to the right, and a Powerpuff Girl set into the LED light source that powers the work's electrical circuit. It is only through these fictional associations that the identity of the otherwise anonymous figure comes into focus. Its skin, worked from mulberry fibre and beeswax, lends it a fleshy, tactile presence.

This tension between bodily material and fictional, digital imagery speaks to the lived experience of Filleul and her friends as transgender people, and to the social, cultural and economic constraints they navigate. The cute aesthetic of Hello Kitty, for instance, may appear at first glance to reinforce traditional gender norms – yet it has simultaneously been claimed by various communities as a form of critique and resistance. Online platforms, in this sense, become alternative worlds, where fictional characters, memes and avatars offer routes of escape from, and resistance to, patriarchal and heteronormative norms.