Perret built on this project for her Sightings exhibition, installing ceramics, a painting, and a body of work that related her interest in utopian societies to the development of a secular Kurdish community. Located in the Syrian region of Rojava, the community is described as a utopia for championing women as leaders and practicing democracy among its inhabitants in the middle of war-torn territory. For the installation, Perret made eight life-size figures in a variety of media—papier-mâché, ceramic, latex—and outfitted them in uniforms and gear appropriate for soldiers. Perret’s figures embody the women fighting in all-female militia groups known as the Y.P.J. or Female Protection Units, a branch of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units which represented the first line of defense against ISIS in the region. Unlike the women of New Ponderosa, the women fighting in the Y.P.J. are real and echo Perret’s utopian feminist ideals.
In addition to
Sightings, Perret staged two performances in collaboration with the Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Family Soluna Music & Arts Festival on June 2 and 4, 2016.
The first performance re-staged a work entitled
Figures, originally performed at the 2014 Biennale of Moving Images in Geneva. Featuring a life-sized marionette whose body was animated by dancer, Anja Schmidt, with vocals and music provided by singer, Tamara Barnett-Herrin, and musician, Beatrice Dillon, the performance cycled through an elaborate narrative that involved an Indian mystic, a 19th-century American Shaker, a 1950s computer programmer, an Artificial Intelligence, and a journalist. The staging recalled the Japanese style of puppetry known as
bunraku, in which manipulators appear on stage alongside the puppets, providing a parallel performance of real and artificial bodies in motion.
Perret’s second performance functioned as a series of happenings throughout the Nasher’s building and garden. Entitled
o, the piece explored the idea of collective identity through processional movement. The artist collaborated with Dillon, Schmidt, and Barnett-Herrin to develop a rhythmic composition that was performed by students of Southern Methodist University.
The Sightings series is generously sponsored by Lara and Stephen Harrison.
Sightings: Mai-Thu Perret was supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia and FABA Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte.
