Born in 1976, Mai-Thu Perret’s distinctive practice crosses a broad range of disciplines, from sculpture to film, ceramics and performance, incorporating multiple references (from avant-garde movements of the 20th century to Oriental philosophy) and fusing disparate methodologies culled from her academic literary background and her experience as a curator.

Mai-Thu Perret decided to pursue a career in art while studying literature at Cambridge University. To smooth the transition between her writing background and her newer interest in painting, she began composing a fictional narrative called The Crystal Frontier in 1999. This story follows a group of women who set out from their urban lives to start a female-only commune in the New Mexico desert. With this narrative as her conceptual framework, Perret began producing objects that the women who inhabited the territory would have used and made, such as their tools, clothes, and even art. Perret’s work has since diverged from exclusively referencing The Crystal Frontier but continues to draw on early feminist literature and science fiction as well as the modernist movements of Dada, Constructivism, and Bauhaus design. From these utopian and dystopian discourses, she builds discontinuous and expansive narratives that contextualize the objects she makes while evoking alternative, female-focused histories and futures.

In 2022 she presented her work at the Swiss Institute in Rome and also had a duo show with works by Sophie Tauber Arp at Cabaret Voltaire Zurich. In 2019, she was the subject of a survey exhibition at MAMCO Geneva. She also had solo exhibitions at Le Portique – centre régional d’art contemporain du Havre, France (2020); Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Germany (2019); Spike Island, Bristol, England (2019); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2016); Le Magasin, Grenoble, France (2012); Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2011); University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor (2010); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2008); and the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (2006). Recent group exhibitions include New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, California (2021); Les Flammes, Musée d’Art moderne de la ville de Paris (2021) ; The Universe of Emma Kunz, A visionary in dialogue with contemporary art, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau (2021) ; Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body (1300–Now); Met Breuer, New York (2018).

Una Szeemann’s installations follow material traces and transferences of invisible phenomena. An approach and exploration through the possibilities of parallel thinking and an investigation of unconscious processes.

Solo and group exhibitions include MAN Museo Nuoro, Kunsthaus Zurich, Kunsthalle Winterthur, Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana Lugano, Kunstverein in Hamburg, Belvedere 21 Vienna, Nam June Paik Art Center Seoul, Kunstmuseum Lucerne, Fundació Joan Miró Barcelona, Contemporary Art Center Vilnius and Kunsthalle Vienna. She also exhibited at Manifesta 11, the 5th Busan Biennale in Korea, 3rd Contour Biennale in Belgium, 9th Lyon Biennale and 52nd Venice Biennale.

In addition, she was a lecturer at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), at the Haute École d'Art et de Design Geneva (HEAD), has given lectures and workshops at École cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL), at the Facoltà di Filosofia of the Università Cattolica Milano, the Akademie der Künste Munich and Akademie der bildenden Künste Vienna.