Even before her exhibition “Oil“ at the German Pavilion of the 2007 Venice Biennial ISA GENZKEN, born in Bad Oldesloe in 1948, was internationally considered as one of the most influential artists working today. In the last three decades, her oeuvre consisting of objects, installations, collages, photographs and films traversed an immense spectrum of materials and morphologies. In her exhibitions – recently large-scale retrospective of her work were on view in London and Cologne – Genzken in particular challenged and determined the contemporary notion of sculpture. Her artist’s edition for “Texte zur Kunst“, entitled, “MONA ISA“, Genzken continues her engagement with the artist’s self-representation in an ironic tension between image and identity. Looking at the upright photograph one beholds Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa“ from the Louvre in Paris – a mysteriously smiling icon of occidental art history, stolen from the museum in 1911, appropriated before by Picabia and Duchamp, nearly destroyed in an acid attack in 1956, today behind high security glass. Observed horizontally, one becomes aware of a second portrait hiding beneath “La Jaconde“: Isa Genzken in a relaxed pose, presumably lying on a couch, her gaze directed away from the beholder, smiling. ”Mona Isa“ maybe already is an icon of art history herself, but it is still her all alone controlling her image.