Land of Crystal

An art of fiction

Mai-Thu Perret was born in 1976 in Geneva, where she lives and works. She studied at Cambridge University and the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York. The first body of works she developed was entitled “The Crystal Frontier”: a series that comprises text and objects, which she describes as either the hypothetical production of a group of women living in autarchy in the desert of New Mexico, or the materialization of the principles that shape their everyday life. Investigating our relationships to common objects found in contemporary art, design spaces, and shops, the artist engages with the consequences and changing realities of utopian thinking as it becomes incorporated into capitalism’s mainstream. The book comprises most of her projects so far, as well as a selection of her texts and a specially designed collage of references.

An artist’s book in the series Christoph Keller Editions, it is published with the Renaissance Society, Chicago; the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva; the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen; and the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht.