Kirsha Kaechele

American artist, curator, and the other half of MONA

‘I can’t do it if it’s ugly. I’m completely uninterested in social work that is not simultaneously aesthetic, and simultaneously an interesting conceptual artwork.’

Kirsha is the First Lady of Mona—the boss’s missus, Mona’s better half, or Mrs. Mona if you prefer. The stiletto-toting Yank, and Tassie local since 2010, enhances our core activity with a series of projects that marry an almost vigilante approach to beauty with outrageous glamour, and specific social outcomes. Kirsha is a colourful counterpart to her august mate, who is less interested in beauty than in taking it apart and understanding how it works. She’s drawn to problems rather than avoiding them—and places transformation at the heart of her work, a lifelong quest to turn flaws into features, shit into gold.

Kirsha was interviewed by Elizabeth Pearce, Mona Research Curator and Senior Writer, in July 2016.

EP: Why are you opening a hacking school?

KK: It seemed like a good evolution of my CA$H 4 GUN$ project. At first I thought it would be fun to do as a conceptual artwork, but I wasn’t serious—it seemed a bit too Black Panthers. Although, now that I say that, I realise that Robert Trivers, the evolutionary biologist who is one of our hacking school’s spiritual guides, actually was a Black Panther. He got excommunicated ‘for his own good’. Anyway, a hacking school sounds dangerous and exciting, and is therefore attractive to at-risk youth. I mean, these guys are literally killing each other and selling crack, so it’s not like they are going to sign up for your feel good, let’s-all-love-one-another self-improvement program. Basically I want to overthrow traditional ideas of what social work looks like—ugly. And what social programs feel like—dorky and boring. It’s tech education disguised as a hacking program—housed in a secret, Dr-Strangelove-meets-James-Bond villain lair.

EP: I am always trying to work out where the line is in your projects between art and social justice.

KK: I can't do it if it's ugly. I'm completely uninterested in social work that is not simultaneously aesthetic, and simultaneously an interesting conceptual artwork. This is important because it impacts what I am able to give… I mean, it’s not really my giving, it’s David’s giving. But the level to which I am prepared to manipulate him into doing what I want is directly tied to how aesthetically rewarding the project is. So if we're going to have a garden program—yeah, okay, I'll get behind a garden program. But I probably won't really start to drive it and expand it to new communities and put all that effort in unless I feel like it's an inspiring, radical reinvention of what a garden program looks like. The basest part of me wants to be at a five-star hotel lapping up luxury treatments at the spa. I can redirect that drive to social work if it becomes art, and if it becomes an engine for societal reinvention...

What happens if we do something with our problems, rather than simply bemoan them? In this case, the problem lies with species that invade and degrade native ecologies. And the solution, perhaps, is to eat them.
Watch Eat the Invaders on ABC iview
Read More The Book
Read more about the Eat the Problem here.
An act of radical diplomacy uniting economists, the forestry industry, scientists, conservationists and artists at Mona, to tackle the question: what is the true value of Tasmania’s forests? Like the Congress itself, this question is evolving, and the project ongoing.
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‘Aesthetics are a social justice issue’, declares Kirsha. Which is why, perhaps, she founded Material Institute—a non-profit social project and registered charity, reaching from Tassie to the USA, New Orleans to here in Hobart. The Institute seeks to fashion a better, more beautiful world of healthy, resilient communities, in which children can achieve their full potential.
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Beauty Lab • Botanical • Botanical Kitchen & Cafe • Bond Place • Clay & Art Studio • Market Garden • 24 Carrot Gardens
The lounge was a tremendously lavish space in our museum in which women could indulge in decadent nibbles, fancy tipples, and other ladylike pleasures—hosted and entertained by the fabulous butler. No boys allowed (the Supreme Court said so).
The Ladies Lounge at Mona is now closed.

Read more
Read an interview with Kirsha on the Ladies Lounge here.
A kitchen garden program in Tasmanian schools, where kids learn to grow, cook and eat healthy produce with a garden-to-plate ethos.
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A conceptual artwork in the form of a gun buyback scheme in New Orleans.
Read an interview with Kirsha here.
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The School
A conceptual artwork in the form of a school. Programs include:
Hacking School
Students learn to break the internet, bit by bit, in collaboration with Ivy League legends. Think world domination by way of code, makers’ workshops, active hacking and learning, theory, ethics / how to avoid jail, and systems thinking.
The Makeup of the Universe
Students learn about the stars—Miss Universe and the universe—while earning a degree in beauty. Guest lecturers include Nobel Prize–winner Brian P. Schmidt who discovered that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. He’s the recipient of our inaugural makeover.
Jung-le Gym
Where conceptual art meets exercise: students act out inner darkness and human archetypes in muscle building aerobic-style, inspired by Carl Jung. Classes take place in open, outdoor spaces, as well as a gymnasium filled with equipment designed by artists and engineers.
The Embassy
Students lay tracks, produce records, write lyrics, and participate in delivery and recording workshops led by esteemed producers.
Bio Lab
Where art meets biological building and research. Students learn the ethics of bioengineering (controversial terrain), create non-toxic nail polishes, designer genes (and jeans), and everything in between—including ways in which we could turn the entire building into a living organism. We’re of the opinion that technology is becoming biology: ‘it’ becomes ‘them’, and then it becomes ‘us’. So, what will it be? Or should that be ‘us’?

KKProjects New Orleans
A project based in the St. Roch neighborhood of New Orleans in six previously abandoned structures: a former bakery, a storefront, and four 1800s houses. Each housed a site-specific installation for a three month exhibition period, with local and international artists invited to work with the spaces as they found them, as well as with the surrounding physical and cultural environment.
KK vs BS (Big Salmon)
Ridiculous and puerile at best, inciting violence at worst.
—Huon Aquaculture boss Frances Bender
Watch here
Mona Victory Gardens
A project turning Mona’s ‘fucking useless’ lawns—the erstwhile site of markets and concerts, beanbags and wine—into a bountiful vegetable garden during COVID-19, complete with social media competition encouraging the general public to follow along at home while cultivating their own victory garden. View the weekly video series here.
The River Derwent Heavy Metal Project
Heavy Metal brings together art and science to address the pollution problem from multiple, creative angles. Press

MoMa (Mona Market)
An al fresco extravaganza of music and food, art and performance, science and craft (of the non-naff variety). A glamorous, roaming collision of high and low art, held on Sundays in the summertime. MoMa—only slightly shitter than Salamanca market. Much, much shitter than the MoMA in New York.