The sculptures, paintings, ceramic works, light installations, performances, and texts of Mai-Thu Perret 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 a new light, introducing utilitarian, symbolic, and even mystical possibilities in contexts often limited to formalist readings. In her encompassing vision, for instance, the development of modernism appears not only as a story of increasing abstraction, but also as the outgrowth of biological and neurological patterns that have informed human expression across the globe for thousands of years. Perret’s work demonstrates how bodies are always implicit subjects of artistic discourse, and how impulses toward utopian transcendence—aesthetic, political, or otherwise—can invariably be traced back to the physicality of desire.

Born in 1976 in Geneva in Switzerland, Perret studied English literature at the University of Cambridge before joining the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York City. Since the early 2000s, her work has been exhibited internationally in both solo and group exhibitions at numerous galleries and institutions. Among others, her work was shown at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, USA; Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, CH; the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, USA; Spike Island, Bristol, UK; MAMCO, Geneva, CH; Swiss Institute, Rome, IT. Her work was presented at the Lyon Biennale in 2007 and the main pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia in 2011. Since 2008, she has taught at HEAD – Haute école d’art et de design in Geneva. Perret is currently presenting her solo exhibition Othermothers at the Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris. From November 15, 2026, her work will be featured in a duo exhibition with Una Szeemann at MASI Lugano in Switzerland.