Maya Perry’s Bed Series features five works, each attributed to one of the artists in Present Imperfect. In an online dialogue, Perry invited the artists to describe their beds in a voice message recorded in their mother tongue, and accompany it with a translated transcript. The audios were then sampled into songs, made in collaboration with Mikey Horesh; the transcript was the starting point of Perry’s drawings, meant to be observed while the songs are played.
Omitting the translations from her final work, Perry calls for a connection that exceeds language. Her intimate drawings of intimate locations visualize the descriptions provided by the people who inhabit these spaces, in a language the viewer/listener does not necessarily understand. This “untranslatability” generates a space that both rejects the erasure of differences between cultures and humans while pointing to universal experiences that go beyond pre-established constructs; the words may be incomprehensible, but their visual and auditory expression creates a different kind of familiarity. Opting for a female-oriented sphere, the bedroom, Perry explores notions of gender and its relation to intimacy, which is interrupted by the vast geographical space in which the project takes place.
Maya Perry is currently expanding her project and would like to invite you to send her audio or written pieces with a description of your bed. Please send the descriptions to: bedseries2021@gmail.com
