Mai-Thu Perret
Mai-Thu Perret is known in both in Europe and the USA for her ambitious multi-disciplinary practice encompassing sculpture, painting, video and installation. Perret has created a complex oeuvre which combines radical feminist politics with literary texts, homemade crafts and 20th century avant-garde aesthetics. Her ongoing project The Crystal Frontier, a fictional narrative chronicling the lives of a group of radically minded women who turn their backs on the city and move to New Mexico to establish a feminist commune, anchors much of the artist’s practice since 1999.
Mirroring the idealism and reflecting upon the failures of the myriad Utopian communities that emerged throughout the last century, Perret’s community highlights the strained relationship between art and social revolution. The diverse artwork inspired by this narrative – from glazed ceramics to wallpaper – masquerades as the ‘hypothetical production’ of the community. This fictional productivity brings to the fore questions concerning the status of the art object – the difference between what it is and what one wants it to be.
Born in Geneva in 1976 and educated at Cambridge University, Perret lives and works in Geneva. She has been awarded both the 2011 Zurich Art Prize and Le Prix Culturel Manor 2011. Perret was included in ILLUMInations (curated by Bice Curiger) at the 54th Venice Biennale. Recent solo exhibitions include Spectra, Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2011); Mai-Thu Perret: The Adding Machine, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau; travelling to Le Magasin, Grenoble (2011); An Ideal for Living, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor (2010); Mai-Thu Perret: New Work, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2009), 2013, Aspen Art Museum (2009); 2012, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London (2008); Crab Nebula, Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen (2008); Land of Crystal, Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht (2007). In 2006 she was also the subject of a major solo exhibition at The Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, and in 2005 at the Centre d’art contemporain, Geneva.
Recent group exhibitions include The 2011 Bridgehampton Biennial (curated by Bob Nickas) (2011); Abstract Possible (curated by Maria Lind), Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2011); Abstract Possible, Malmo Konsthall (2010); Living Together (curated by Emma Dexter and Xabier Arakistain), Centro Cultural Montehermoso Kuturunea (2009). In 2007 she participated in the Lyon Biennale and in Eurocentric at the Rubell Family Collection in Miami.
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