NARRATOR:

This sculpture, Sylvania, is part of Swiss artist Mai-Thu Perret’s nonlinear narrative The Crystal Frontier. It’s a story about a community of women who have moved to the desert of the Southwest to escape from patriarchy and capitalism by creating a utopian society. The Crystal Frontier is a conceptual framework for many of Perret’s sculptures and art objects. Here’s Curator Apsara DiQuinzio:

APSARA DIQUINZIO:

I think that when you approach the work, you see this sort of mysterious figure that’s both abstract but unmistakably a woman. Sylvania is in this sort of devotional pose with her arms upraised. It’s almost like a joyous pose, a celebratory pose. At the same time, it’s also a pose you might see people in when they’re in church, worshipping. Or almost like a yogic pose of some kind.

And she wears this very intricate lace-patterned dress that is based on the pattern of wood grain. And I think that immediately, you’re drawn to the sort of intricacy of the dress. But then that contrasts so heavily to the sort of odd, rough-hewn nature of the actual body, which is just made out of papier-mâché. It’s a dress that actually can’t be worn in the real world because it’s so delicate. And I think that’s important to note, in the sense that it denotes that this is a sort of imaginary world that these objects inhabit.