Bodonyi Emőke (szerk.): Lélekvándorlásaim. Péreli Zsuzsa kiállítása. 2017.11.30 - 2018.02.25. Ferenczy Múzeum, Szentendre (Szentendre, 2017)
is focused on the present. She recognizes the problems of the contemporary world, in which values are hidden or lost, and her compositions inventively reveal environmental, communal, psychological and material troubles. This artistic attitude is not tied to a specific period: her most recent work, Reflection (2017) also contrasts the greyness and overgrowth of the contemporary world with erstwhile great powers and glorious periods, which time has not spared. The work allows for two ways of viewing: it can be turned around to let either of the two worlds be on top. Icon, End of the 20th Century (1987) addresses estrangement. The faces floating on the bare warps were inspired by people on escalators, wrapped up in their worries. The group of portraits that hang like marionettes and the tremulous warps, the bare strings of life, are enclosed in a wide, red frame, which added a political message to the composition at a time before the political transition of 1989. Composed in a similar manner, List of Tenants (1986) replaces the residents' names with faces in the pedimented wooden box that used to hang in a tenement building in the 8th District of Budapest. While the works just mentioned lay bare human relations in contemporary reality, Landscape, End of 20th Century (1990) demonstrates an anxiety about our environment, thanks to the pieces of everyday rubbish woven into it. Zsuzsa Péreli wove her first large tapestry with an angel in 1997; it is another work to reflect on the darker side of life. Beautiful and tired-looking, the Poor Angel that hovers over the smoky concrete jungle on long, extended wings, is weighed down by the worthless coins of the former socialist countries. It has identified with the problems of the people who live behind the windows, it has come to help, but its posture, similar to that of the suffering Christ, does not suggest a happy outlook on the contemporary world. It is part of the work's history that the director of the Aubusson Museum of Tapestry liked it so much that she offered to stage an exhibition for Zsuzsa Péreli; with the 2001 show, she became the first foreign artist to have a solo display in the native land of the Gobelin. This was the occasion for which she prepared the second work to feature an angel: it now had a different mission, that of connecting the terrestrial and the heavenly harmony. The Musicians While being sensitive to the A Back problems of the present, Pereli intensively searched for real values, gems of which she found in Őrség, a region closed off for decades as a western frontier zone. She started to visit it in the late 1970s, when the restrictions were lifted, and she found untouched streets and houses, original farming methods. She got closer to life in the country thanks to a house in Tahitótfalu, which she inherited in the 1970s and initially considered a temporary residence. This soon changed when at the end of the decade she made it her home. She still lives there. She depicted the experiences of her trips to Őrség in several tapestries. The Gobelin, Recollection of a Fete at Kercaszomor (1978) is a spiritual collage of her memories, the experience of getting to know the village by the Slovenian border. The derelict houses bore testimony to a one-time affluence, which appears in the tapestry that resembles a family photograph, in the man's cigar, and the mansion-like homes. The child of Master of Ceremonies (1983) was inspired by a photo; there are real ribbons hanging from his hat. He stands with a startled solemnity among the studio props, the heavy velvet curtain, the small carved antique column, the Persian rug and the landscape painted on the wall. Greetings from Felsőszenterzsébet (1983) commemorates the sky-blue manor house the artist could still visit, and even campaigned for its preservation, before it was pulled down, and its timber was sold for firewood. The reel she found in an attic in Őrimagyarosd, once used to measure out the thread, Péreli employed in an artwork (Reel, 1987). The small scenes woven into the warps stretched on it represent stages of life, from infanthood, through childhood, youth, military service, marriage, and old age, to death. When you reach the end of the spinning tableaux, and the dove of the holy spirit appears, you can hear the bell that originally signalled the desired length of thread. The certificates of merit given to demobilized soldiers and hung in conspicuous places in village houses gave the inspiration for the tapestry entitled To Commemorate the Years of Service (1984). However, the composition completely departs from the structure of the models, in which mounted hussars wave their swords or uniformed figures stand in a landscape lined with guns, with their faces replaced with the awardees' photos. At first sight, Péreli’s work seems a scene of apotheosis, with the glorified ex-soldier elevated to the heavens. At closer inspection, however, the first impression turns out to be wide of the mark. With its leaves and branches reaching for the sky, the tree has entirely grown together with the bust of the soldier, the very braids of whose uniform have turned into leaves. Further, the hillocks that replicate the rhythm of the fleecy clouds are more like burial mounds, with burning houses and villages among them. All wars are opposed in Melancholy (1990), whose central lO
