How Anna Perach uses an ancient carpet-making technique to tell tales

As the new art fair Eye of the Collector lands in London for its second outing, we spoke to textile artist Anna Perach – who is showing a mythology-inspired marvel with Cooke Latham, one of the 25 galleries taking part.

How did you begin tufting?

I learned to do it five years ago while studying for my MFA at Goldsmiths University. I initially used it to make masks, but those grew into larger, 3D wearable sculptures that I incorporate into performances. It relates to my interest in rituals and masquerade – how you can hide your identity or reveal certain aspects of it through what you put on your body. Before Goldsmiths, I did a lot of embroidery. Tufting has elements of embroidery, but on a much larger scale.

What themes do you explore?

I was born in Ukraine, and my family moved to Israel when I was small. About seven years ago, I came to the UK. My experience of not belonging, how I’ve chosen to be positioned and the codes of each culture are ideas I’m interested in. Folklore is a helpful tool to use because people can relate to such stories. They have the ability to transform through different periods of time, but still remain current.

How does folklore manifest in your work?

I was very influenced by Slavic folklore because that’s my heritage, but the more I looked at different traditions, I found that they have similarities, which drew me to the idea of archetypes – characters that have various representations in different cultures, but symbolise the same thing. For instance, in my exhibition at ADA Project in Rome in March 2021, I continued a series called Seven Wives, which references baroque artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculpture Apollo and Daphne from 1625. At the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art in Israel (31 July 31-20 November 2021), I showed three big tufted characters that reflect on female archetypes.

What will you be showing at Eye of the Collector in London this month?

I’m showing a new piece entitled Expansion. The inspiration behind it came from thinking about what happens when a vessel cannot contain its contents anymore. In this case, the vessel is vase-shaped, and the contents is a tufted sculpture of a body, which emerges from and expands out of the vase. It's a mutating, metamorphosing body with multiple limbs and faces – while it expands out from the vessel, it is also expanding out from its biology.

Can you tell us what inspired Expansion?

I've been thinking a lot about metamorphosis lately. It's a theme that often appears in Greek mythology: from Arachne, the weaver who was transformed into a spider, to the nymph Daphne who is turned into a tree – there's so many narratives in which people become plants or animals. I'm not quite sure what my character is becoming, but I do know that a transition is taking place.

Eye of the Collector ran from 11 to 14 May 2022 at Two Temple Place, London, and online. An earlier version of this article appeared in Crafts issue 287