Title: Same Same but Another Millennium
Year: 2000
Illustrator: Navin Production
Volume: 10
Page: 4 / volume
Publisher: Flash Art International
Related Exhibition/Project: Same Same but Another Millennium

Before Dan Brown, Navin lays claim to his Na Vinci Code, with a story that starts at the Louvre on millennium night, with the surface of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa cracking up. Behind the cracks Flash Art publisher Giacarlo Politi and his family find Asian paint pigment with art experts Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Hou Hanru asked to take the painting to show Navin in Thailand. Navin shows it to his Thai art professor friend, Uthit, meanwhile the painting cracks further to reveal a taxi sign hiding in the landscaped background. Navin, an artist-cum-tuk-tuk driver, travels back in time with the visiting art experts to 15th century Florence, to meet the young Leonardo. Struggling among his peers and competing against other artists, Leonardo wants to paint Mona Lisa but she isn’t interested, so Navin and his gang have to persuade her. Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and other art celebrities also appear in Florence to criticise Leonardo’s work. Romance blossoms between Navin and the Mona Lisa and she finally agrees to be painted with Navin supplying paints to Leonardo that he has kept in the back of his tuk-tuk. Navin confesses his love for Mona Lisa, but her family doesn’t understand Navin or his tuk-tuk contraption, yet the vehicle does help inspire Leonardo to draw his flying machines. A rejected Navin leaves his tuk-tuk in Florence and is transported back to the present, but lovesick Mona Lisa asks Leonardo to paint the tuk-tuk into the background of her portrait as a memory to her lost love. Later Mona Lisa’s family order another artist to paint over the background tuk-tuk, which is why no-one has ever seen it until 21st century.