Totalisateur
2018
Appliqué on cotton
200 × 200 cm
Courtesy of Galerie Francesca Pia, Zurich
Untitled
2019
3 pairs of woollen mittens
Courtesy of the artist
The sculptures, paintings, ceramic works, performances and texts made by Mai Thu Perret (1976) exist at the intersection of contemporary culture, art historical critique and visceral materiality. She explores (and generates) feminist narratives and counter-narratives that cast the role of the art object in new light, introducing utilitarian, symbolic and even mystical possibilities into contexts that are often limited to formalist readings. For instance, the development of modernism appears, in her encompassing vision, not only as a story about increasing abstraction but as the outgrowth of biological and neurological patterns that have informed human expression throughout the globe for thousands of years. Perret’s work shows how bodies are always implicit subjects of artistic discourse and how impulses for utopian transcendence (aesthetic, political, or otherwise) can always be traced back to the physicality of desire.
For Survival Kit 10.1, Mai Thu Perret has created three new works and three pairs of mittens based on traditional Latvian designs, employing geometric abstract patterns and also referencing, amongst other things, Russian constructivism, folk textiles and the imagery of the Wiener Secession. She is especially interested in the triangular form of the traditional Latvian mitten, which resembles a miniature house or a shelter. These small-scale works are accompanied by a monumental banner inspired by the work of the abstract art pioneer Hilma af Klint. Thu Perret finds Hilma af Klint’s approach especially relevant as she arrived at similar results as her more famous modernist peers by a completely different route, namely by using abstraction to express her mystical quest and beliefs.