In A Forgotten Tongue: An Interview of Mattea Perrotta

Mattea Perrotta
Perdòno, 2023
oil on canvas
57 x 77 in
195.6 x 144.8 cm

interview by Lara Monro

Our primary means of conveying meaning is through spoken and written forms, as well as sign language. But what do we do when faced with language barriers, unable to verbally communicate with another/others? Google translate is one option, but what happens when we use our imagination? Or when we explore the imagination of others through our own unique lens?

The earliest civilizations used cave walls as canvases to share their knowledge, beliefs, and stories. For visual artist, Mattea Perrotta, art has become a way of conveying her secrets and vulnerabilities. It has also become a lexicon to connect with others, often from different countries and communities. During her time in Morocco, challenged with learning Arabic but keen to connect with her hosts, she started using drawings to engage with her companions. It was a familiar and natural way of interpreting the world around her. 

A diagnosis of synesthesia at an early age was the catalyst for Perrotta’s need to develop an individual language; mathematical formulas made sense when color coded, as did phone numbers. This subsequently translated into her art form, which began with abstract shapes, defining her earlier career. Perrotta’s practice evolved organically, and in recent years a figurative approach has occupied her canvases as she investigates, questions and challenges the canon of art history referencing the work of Pablo Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci.

This May, Perrotta is exhibiting in her hometown, Los Angeles, for the first time since moving to Europe five years ago. Her solo show, In A Forgotten Tongue, at Praz Delavallade, signifies a turning point for the artist, harking back to an abstract style whilst continuing her investigation into art historical movements; Baroque, Renaissance and Cubism. Each shape within a canvas, or tapestry work, takes on its own vocabulary, distinguished by color and size. As this is Perrotta’s secret language, we are left with subtle signals and our imaginations to interpret the work.  

In the following interview, the artist explains why she describes her paintings as being similar to lasagna and what she will be researching during her residency this summer at the American Academy Rome.

LARA MONRO: Can you tell me about how your early diagnosis of synesthesia impacted you creative practice?

MATTEA PERROTTA: School didn’t come naturally to me. Mathematics and spelling were incredibly difficult (and still are). I took exams in other rooms than my classmates to have more time. It was really embarrassing as a kid. I would get so nervous before going to school I would throw up. My mom found this hippie healer outside of Los Angeles to help me deal with my nerves and anxiety in elementary school. She asked me what I enjoyed doing in my spare time and I told her I loved to draw. During our meetings I would draw whilst we spoke. While I was drawing with crayons I told her that when I used a particular color I would see a letter or number—that was my earliest introduction into synesthesia. As I got older and understood what synesthesia meant, I began to use it as a learning tool in school. I essentially was able to cheat my way through academia because I created my own unique language through color that had direct associations with letters and numbers. For example, in math, I would color code on my arms equations or formulas. I still use it to this day when I need to remember phone numbers or how to spell something. Recently I began teaching and I share this with my students who  ]might have synesthesia without knowing how it can be used as a learning tool. 

 

Mattea Perrotta
Lingua Madre, 2023
oil on canvas
77 x 57 in
195.6 x 144.8 cm

 

MONRO: Do you see all your art as your secret language? 

PERROTTA: Of course. That's the power of abstraction. You can share your deepest secrets and emotions without giving too much away. It’s incredibly liberating. I resist revealing myself. I’m comfortable with secrets. Abstraction allows me to reveal myself, be vulnerable, whilst still having it be my own. I’ve created a language through abstraction where my secrets can breathe on canvas, but behind a veil of form and color. This is the age of diaries, the talk show, the autobiography, social media. Everyone is an online activist—this self and this experience of selfness in its guises and disguises as it addresses language and as it confers secrets and meanings.

MONRO: Can you tell me how your art form has helped you communicate in the different places you have lived over the years?

PERROTTA: The first memory that comes to my mind is when I was living in Morocco. I was an artist in residence below the Atlas Mountains in this very tiny town called Tahanaout. There were two local artists there, Mohammed Mourabiti and Mahi Binebine. Mohammed ran the residency and Mahi had a studio there. I recommend everyone to get to know their work. I lived on site and painted in another studio during Ramadan. We would gather in the evenings and have dinner together. They spoke in Arabic, I attempted to learn the basics as much as possible, but it wasn’t enough for me to communicate. We began drawing during our dinners to express what we wanted to say. One can imagine how long these dinners were speaking through paper and pencil. I’ll never forget it. We sat in a cave underneath his studio exchanging stories about our homes, and our practice. Art can be an amazing tool for communication when we’re in unfamiliar territory. 

MONRO: You will be showcasing a new body of work in your upcoming exhibition, In a Forgotten Tongue. Is the show connected to your last two exhibitions, which examined the canon of art history through the work of Pablo Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci? 

PERROTTA: Absolutely. My work always had a heavy influence from Renaissance periods and Picasso’s cubist period. My love for Renaissance painting comes from my time living in Florence after I graduated from [UC] Berkeley. While living there, I studied Renaissance painting and iconography at the Uffizi gallery. In 2018, I moved to Paris and lived near the Picasso museum and would frequent places that he and the surrealists, Dora Maar hung out at. I completely immersed myself in his world and became obsessed with his way of painting and playfulness. That time in Paris for an artist was so special. In recent years—the London years I say—I have been exploring a way to combine the two periods (Baroque and Cubist) into one lens. Research has always been a large part of my practice. Being a traveler keeps me eternally curious about studying the language, traditions and art of where I am, and incorporating that into the work. My paintings are a bit like lasagnas; layers of information I’ve been fed from various places. 

 

Mattea Perrotta
Lo Straniero, 2023
oil on canvas
77 x 57 in
195.6 x 144.8 cm

 

MONRO: It seems that the works presented in In a Forgotten Tongue are moving away from your more recent figurative pieces?

PERROTTA: Indeed. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with galleries that allow me to take risks within my work. I’ve always been someone that’s gone against the grain of what is expected to an extent. I was lucky enough to have my first show with abstract paintings and have it be received well, but after that I wanted to continue to explore different realms. Again, traveling feeds me with so much information that I like to digest it in different ways in my work. In a Forgotten Tongue is a full circle period for me. It’s the first show I’ve done in my hometown in five years since I moved to Europe. It feels like the right time to go back to my earlier abstractions because Los Angeles was that for me. The architecture of the city, the light, the colors, history, immigration of cultures feels like one big abstract painting. Then I left and lived in a few different cities that had heavy influences of Renaissance art from churches to medieval cathedrals. Being able to make abstract paintings incorporating these earlier Renaissance traditions—periods of places I’ve lived through a contemporary lens—feels really on a par with where I am right now in my life and my family’s history.

MONRO: You have created tapestry pieces for this show. Were they created by the same weavers you worked with when living in Morocco in 2017? And, what drew you back to creating tapestry works? 

PERROTTA: While I was living in Tahanaout, I became fascinated with materials and mediums. Mohammed and Mahi worked largely with various materials, which opened the floodgates for me to think differently in the studio. On my way there, the airport confiscated my bag of oil paint, so when I arrived in Morocco I didn’t have access to supplies as easily. I began using pigments from the souk as paint. I’d take dirt from my walks and apply it to the canvas. I used the land as a medium. Then, I started thinking more existentially about the painting as a living and breathing being. Morocco is known for their carpets. I met the group of weavers whom I’ve now been working with for the last seven years. The first time I went there with my friend, we got lost three different times, hitch hiked, and had an entire village helping us find the studio. It’s in a very remote town outside of Rabat. I became interested in the way of turning the painting into a livable being, such as a carpet. How it can be enjoyed as a tangible object, eating on it, laying on it, how the painting becomes part of you in a more visceral way. I enjoy the challenge of bringing these instrumental paintings to life, such as my L’Ultima Cena series—making it an interactive and somewhat performative work of art. For the Cena show in Berlin last year, my dear friend Frank Maston composed my paintings into medieval compositions. We released a little cassette for the show. The audio played throughout the entirety of the exhibition. I loved the idea of a painting becoming an invisible feeling that only exists in the ethers. I wanted the paintings to have a voice. My other friend from Bronze Age in London printed a lithograph book of the paintings with text about each apostle. My mother made her famous pasta and we had dinner at the table I had installed for the show. It became a feast of the senses on every level. I really enjoy exploring different territories within my work.

Mattea Perrotta
Perdoni I, 2023
hand dyed, hand sewn wool
57 x 77 in
144.8 x 195.6 cm

MONRO: You will be artist in residence at the American Academy Rome this summer. What inspired you to apply and what will you be working on during your time in the program? 

PERROTTA: AAR has been a place where many artists I’ve admired have resided, such as Philip Guston, Bert Long Jr., Martha Boydenn, Jannis Kounellis, and David Hammons, to name a few. The program gives me an opportunity to live within an artistic community and learn about my peers’ process and practices, immerse myself within the history of those who worked there, and challenge myself to find new ways of approaching my studio time. Rome is one of the greatest cities in the world, the history, art, culture—there’s so much beneath those walls that can be explored 1,000 times over again and I feel as though I’ve only ever managed to scratch the surface. Being able to live and work there will allow me to further dive into my research of connecting the dots between Renaissance and contemporary narratives through art, history, and architecture.

MONRO: Being in different places is a huge part of your identity and creative practice; engaging with different cultures and communities. Are you planning to stay and work in Italy post residency? 

PERROTTA: I am. I’ll be living and working in Naples full time. My father is Italian and I recently got my dual citizenship. I’ve always felt connected to the culture and my family’s heritage. They grew up in a region called Campobasso in a small village as farmers. It’s a beautiful, tiny mountain town not far from a seaside town called Termoli. They value tradition, the piano piano lifestyle, which in Italian means “slowly, slowly.” I really like to transition into that after living in metropolitan cities, to immerse myself in the humility of it, and see where it takes my paintings. There’s so much more to explore and learn. People and places will forever humble and inspire me to be the best version of myself as a person and artist. I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to live in such a way and share it with others. 

Mattea Perrotta
Echoing Dialects, 2023
hand dyed, hand sewn wool
77 x 105 in
195.6 x 266.7 cm

In A Forgotten Tongue is on view through June 24 at Praz Delavallade 6150 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles CA 90048

Hybrid Forms: An Interview Of Artist & Storyteller Christopher Myers

Courtesy of the artist and Fort Gansevoort

interview by Summer Bowie

How does a country like Vietnam, absent of a black community, develop a rich brass band tradition with roots in the American South? How did the British flag inspire a Ghanaian tradition in textiles that is steeped in magical superstition? What do Aimé Césaire, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Emma Goldman all have in common? To find the answers to any of these questions you’d have to ask none other than the multi-disciplinary, head honcho of hybridity, artist Christopher Myers. His practice is as much about connecting the mythologies of ancient Egypt and Greece with those of Judeo-Christian scripture, as it is about connecting the migrations of syncratic practices across the globe and throughout history. His most recent solo exhibition, Drapetomania, at Fort Gansevoort in Los Angeles primarily features hand-sewn flags depicting a wide array of syncratic allegories that in many ways define the globalized, contemporary psyche. These are the mythologies that form the foundation of our collective truth (though we know them to be fiction), and the forgotten legacies that have silently burrowed themselves deep into our cultural fabric. These narratives that inform us and define us find their way to us via oral traditions, dramatic performance, visual art and the printed page, and within all of these disciplines you will find Christopher Myers, obsessively studying the origins of every fiber, the intricacies of every pattern, and the channels of commerce that facilitate it all.

SUMMER BOWIE: Your new show, Drapetomania, at Fort Gansevoort LA features primarily quilted tapestries fabricated in Luxor, Egypt. How did you find these artisans, and why textiles?

CHRISTOPHER MYERS: I was doing research for theater design. I worked with a collaborator, Kaneza Schaal, on a piece about the Egyptian Book of the Dead in 2014. And as part of the research for that book, I went to the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt. That trip was a gift of a trip. Luxor is a place that has been alive for generations and generations with culture, with religion, with spirituality, with all of the things that we all care about and love. And, while I was there, I ran into these fabric workers who work in the tourist trade. Because, the language that I speak most fluently is the language of speaking to other artists about making things, we quickly got into those conversations: what is the work you’re making, the years of training that go into hands that can sew so deftly, and the ways in which the tourist works aren’t really satisfying to them. So, we started to work together on work that is basic craft, but can speak to not only the traditions that I come from—traditions that are often relegated to poor people, or to women, or to people of color—but also to the other history that I’ve now encountered: from contemporary thinking and performance art, to work in other countries that I think this work is in dialogue with. 

I’m thinking especially of Asafo flags, which are a hybrid form in Ghana. The Ghanaian people, when they were colonized by the British, they saw the British parading with their flags and they saw these flags as a kind of magic that was used to exert power over them, and they thought, “we know how to make this magic. We can sew our own.” So, they made flags for parading, for teaching about their own specific identities. And, I love all of that work. Work that takes what the West has given us and then transforms it into art that speaks to the entire world.

BOWIE: In regard to those identities, it seems like you explore a lot of narratives and mythologies that are shared between several different cultures. So, a lot of the stories you are telling with these flags are stories that your fabricators are already familiar with as well. This is such a shared language.

MYERS: Absolutely. If you travel to places in which the pathways of tourism are less trod, you’ll find that the things that overlap in the venn diagrams of our identities end up being these larger myths, these bigger stories about what it means to be human, about ways of talking, about our relationship with the Divine, or our relationship with nature, or our relationship with the mass of humanity, and I think those are the overlaps that I’m particularly interested in. If you grow up like me: Catholic, but super involved in some super syncratic practices, you realize there’s a relationship between a god like Horus in ancient Egypt and the baby Jesus. I’m interested in the syncratic impulse and the mixing of mythologies.

BOWIE: Your sculptures explore the roles that men of African origins have played at various points in history. Can you talk a bit about the generational lineage and its relationship to labor and bondage that you’re referencing in these pieces?

MYERS: One of the things is that there are obviously syncratic impulses that people understand. You see images of God across cultures. But then, there are ways in which our cultural migration, our cultural instinct shows itself. So much of the iron work of the Old South was derivative of the West African iron workers who were forced to migrate here and were enslaved as highly skilled labor in the States. So, the techniques of iron work—the patterning of the wrought iron rails of New Orleans that we associate with upper class housing—are actually patterns that are borrowed from West Africa. I’m interested in those cultural mixings. For example, a collar that is filled with candles; I think a lot about the idea that so many of the people who were actually making shackles during the slavery period in the United States were West African imports. Black people who did the labor of building shackles—we were forced to build shackles for our brothers and sisters. I’m also fascinated by the idea that we did that, but there had to be moments of resistance, even if they were just symbolic. Moments of telling another story, and that is what’s most exciting. Similarly, I’m always interested in the way that no change is ever simple. No bondage is ever without complication.  

Courtesy of the artist and Fort Gansevoort

BOWIE: The rat cage mask—with its reference to vaudevillian sideshows, the bondage of both the human and animal performers involved—it feels like it really calls into question the opportunity for resistance. 

MYERS: And what’s interesting to me is that those stories are complicated, always. The 1980s were some of the last vestiges of that kind of performance. There was a guy who had some kind of bone deficiency in which his limbs were severely compromised, and he displayed himself as The Frog Man throughout Texas, and at some point a human rights group got wind of this and sponsored a very strident protest to this practice—without ever having consulted the guy. And the guy said, “If it hadn’t been for my life as a performer, I would still be selling pencils from a moving cart in Texas, but instead I’ve seen the world.” And, I think that we have to look at all of these stories and complicate them. To understand that nobody is that perfect victim that we want them to be. 

BOWIE: You started illustrating your father’s children’s books in the ‘90s. Did you initially learn the art of storytelling through him?

MYERS: My first storytelling coach would’ve been my grandfather, who didn’t read a word of English, but was the best storyteller that I’ve ever known. He didn’t read at all, he didn’t read a word of English, he didn’t read anything but he was a great storyteller. That is part of what I mean by coming from a tradition of artists, makers, and creators who may not be recognized by any kind of mainstream world. Of course, my father was a writer. Him being a writer, he was taking some of those things he learned from his father and translating them into a form that could be read, that was legible to others as an art form. But make no mistake, we were all very clear that the chief storyteller in my family was my grandfather, and that we’ve all just been trickling down from his talents.

BOWIE: You pull references from all over the world and across time. Your wide array of disciplines is just as disparate. Is there a common thread at all?

MYERS: I love making things. I have a slight addiction, maybe it’s a problem, I’m sure it would be diagnosable if someone had a word for it. I believe that stories really do change the world. Today, I was in a classroom in Queens, a place called Central Queens Academy Charter School. In that room, 50 or 60 children whose families have come from all over the world, from Tibet, Nepal, Dominican Republic, the Philippines, and China, and every one of them is a hero, they are their own Odysseus. I live in this world in which there are stories around me, there are stories that can change the world, and my job is to find the form, and to usher these stories into the world in a kind of public way. At this moment, I’m preparing for a play that will be produced off Broadway next week that I’ve written about migrations, Cartography. It’s a theater piece for young people thinking about the challenges of migration. The thing that is central is this idea of trying to fight the tide of forgetting that is so often imposed on all of our stories of migration. 

BOWIE: In 2016, you presented work alongside Pollock, Warhol and Billie Holiday at Cooper Gallery in a show that explored the intersection between jazz music and visual art. Can you talk about the genesis of that piece?

MYERS: I think that one of the things that is interesting about being African American is the idea that we are some of the original hybridized people. We are some of the first people in the world to kind of have defined identities on that hyphen between two cultures. And jazz is absolutely the central exemplar of that hybridity of mixing European instruments with tonal patterns and rhythms that are from the continent. That being said, that specific set of pieces is a piece that was born in Vietnam. 

So, I was living in Vietnam, and early in the morning you hear jazz music kind of wandering through the streets. Like, yo man, where’s this jazz music coming up to my apartment from the street? I ran outside and what I found was a brass band tradition that intersected with other brass band traditions like New Orleans jazz, but it’s used for funerals. So, in the morning you see all these funeral marches and jazz bands, and there were moments of  recognition because the form is so indebted to African Americans. So, I began to make a series of uniforms and instruments for this funeral march that would go from Saigon to New Orleans. What was shown at the Cooper Gallery was a piece of that series of instruments that I built with instrument makers that were from Vietnam. It was subsequently made into a film via my friends who were called The Propeller Group, a Vietnamese-American art collective. We were very excited to take this work that is centered on levels and levels of hybridity and cultural movement, and to literalize some of that hybridity, to make almost mythical beings of the instruments, chimera and hydra of trumpets, French horns, and cymbals. That was the center of that piece. And, for real, I think that when you look at so much of the work that we love, it comes from cultural collision.

BOWIE: How exactly did jazz make its way to Vietnam if there’s not a black community existing there?

MYERS: Right, that would be an obvious question for me. What I found was that it comes from the French. James Reese Europe was an African-American bandleader for the military during World War I. He brought jazz to Europe, he brought it specifically to France, so the French took up this brass band tradition in their colonization of Vietnam, who then picked up this tradition that’s been handed down, and handed down, and handed down. What was fascinating was asking the musicians in Vietnam, “Where did you get this tradition from?” And they said, “We don’t know!” This is what I’m talking about in terms of the currency of forgetting, the tide of forgetting, and I’m hoping in some small way can help to stem that tide. 

 
 

BOWIE: How did your appreciation for Vaslav Nijinsky come about?

MYERS: I’m interested in histories of colonialism. So, Nijinsky as a young Polish talent was taken up into the Russian system and his kind of cultural mix, having been colonized. There’s this thing called drain theory that happens as a result of colonial powers. They take the great talents from the people they are colonizing, and those people become these hybrid figures, people like Nijinsky or Aimé Césaire, or Senghor. So many great poets and intellectual figures are hybrid figures that have been educated in the West, but have come back home and tried to find ways to resurrect their own traditions. Nijinsky is so different, especially because at some point he kind of succumbs to the mental stress and was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was thirty, and never danced again after having revolutionized the world of dance. But, when you read his journal—he kept a meticulous journal—for six weeks just as he was turning the corner of mental health, and when you read that journal you can see how so much of what was affecting him were the cultural pressures of his time; the split and hybridized identity. At one point he writes, “I’m a Negro. I’m a Chinese. I’m a Red Indian. I’m a White.” And he has kind of lost himself, and lost his own sense of his identity. Not only the colonial experience he’s undergoing, but also the ways in which he is replicating the colonial gaze as a dancer. He also dances as other ethnicities. He dances as a Thai, or as an Indian, and that kind of hybridity, and revealing in his journals was and continues to be very inspiring to me.

BOWIE: Do you think the art world would dance more [socially] if they worked more with dancers?

MYERS: Well, the first thing I would like to say is I very much appreciate your recognition that the art world is abysmal when it comes to dance. So, I think that firstly, the art world has some of the worst parties because of this dance aversion. And I also feel like the art world needs to start to back up their imagination of themselves as being global by getting out of their houses, and I mean that both metaphorically and literally. More and more they’re realizing you see the same people in seven cities. I’m not particularly interested in that party. I wish that more of them would come to some of the events that I continually gather. I’m interested in experiencing things and places that could touch you and change the way you see the world. Hopefully, that’s what the work is doing too.

Drapetomania is on view through February 8 at Fort Gansevoort Los Angeles, 4859 Fountain Avenue. Follow Christopher Myers on Instagram @kalyban