Mai-Thu Perret

This latest volume in the On Words series is dedicated to Mai-Thu Perret, one of Switzerland’s most recognized contemporary artists. In conversation with Sarah Burkhalter, she talks about her personal fascinations, the randomness of glazing ceramics, and her love of reading. Burkhalter and Perret also explore artistic and intellectual means of including the importance of motherhood into art discourse without being reduced to that role.

Born in Geneva in 1976, and of Franco-Vietnamese heritage, Perret combines ceramics, installation, film, sculpture, painting, and textiles in her practice, which is based on an original affinity for writing and storytelling. She draws on the artistic and historic genealogies of the avant-garde as well as on Zen and feminist literature to create objects, spaces, and performances in which anthropology and political history give rise to intriguing heterotopias.