Bodonyi Emőke (szerk.): Lélekvándorlásaim. Péreli Zsuzsa kiállítása. 2017.11.30 - 2018.02.25. Ferenczy Múzeum, Szentendre (Szentendre, 2017)
$ One of the most outstanding Hungarian tapestry artists, Zsuzsa Péreii has not had an exhibition at the Ferenczy Museum since 1990. The current display selects from her most beautiful and important works, and groups them in accordance with their spiritual empathies to offer an overview of a career of over four decades, guiding us down the path the artist follows. er far-from-typical childhood was a key influence on H the development of her art. Not all childhoods are typical, of course, and some miss it altogether, Mozart being probably the most famous of the latter class, touring Europe's royal and ducal courts with her sister at the age of six. Zsuzsa Péreii satin cafes after school, with her multitalented mother, who drew inspiration for her work and life from this ambience. They picked up the most commonplace household items at a flea market, and where they lived was not so much home as the next one in a row of seventeen flats they went through over the years. Zsuzsa Péreli’s eyes and heart were already sensitive during her itinerant childhood, and her experiences affect herthinkingto this day. During this time of carefree contemplation she was most interested in people, watching them in the cafés and trying to intuit their lives. Old things at the flea market also piqued her interest. The faces in the yellowed photographs of old family albums particularly fascinated her as she tried to imagine the lives behind them. While she could not yet interpret the past of the photographs, they captured her heart. Later, when she was already weaving tapestries under their influence, she realized the mise en scene of the photos had little to do with the world in which the models lived. These simple folks put on their Sunday best when a travelling photographer arrived in the village, because they instinctively felt they needed to leave behind a memento—if only by posing rigidly for a moment. Id films also count among the last experiences of I I Zsuzsa Péreli’s childhood. She spent a lot of time at Filmmúzeum, discovering, among others, Sarah Bernhardt, Emília Márkus, and the Danish silent film star, Asta Nielsen. The latter's portrait is featured in five of Péreli's tapestries; the artist was interested not in the roles she played but rather in the actress herself, who could identify with others, and who revealed a special talent in different arts. This may have been one of the things that encouraged Péreii to collect the mementos of an erstwhile Golden Age, rummaging through attics and markets, and to get closer to the reality of simple people through the objects of old urban and folk culture. She became interested in village life, though she was born and raised in Budapest. When as a teenager she visited the Tokaj artist retreat in the 1960s, with the Postás Képzőművészeti Kör (Postal Service Art Society), which was led by György Zilahy, she sensed the villagers' agreeable sympathy towards her, but did not realize she committed herself, then and there, to life in the country. Icon, End of the 20+h Century In the 1970s, a period important in the history of Hungarian art, contemporary textile art underwent a radical transformation, breaking out of the traditional frame of applied art and gaining autonomy as a genre. The Szombathely biennials of textile art provided a forum for this process. Zsuzsa Péreii, who graduated at the College of Applied Art in 1974, first exhibited at the fourth instalment of the biennial, in 1976, presenting her Antiquity, which she made from silk scarves produced in Lyon. This was her way of expressing her appreciation of old objects, which she protected as a profession before her college years, working as a restorer at the Castle Museum. Four years later, in 1980, she won the biennial's first prize with her Amnesia. As regarded rejuvenating the genre, it might have seemed an anachronistic move to look into the past and represent a couple in the manner of old photographs. However, Péreii found a way to harmonize her commitment to the traditions and values of the Gobelin with not only the theme, but the revitalization as well of the art of tapestry. Hung in space and emphatically set apart from its environment by a broad red frame, the work highlighted the anatomy of the Gobelin, showing both the face and the reverse of the woven tapestry. The wefts left untied on both sides refer to the disintegrating relationship of the two people: they barely remember each other's face or how important once they were to each other. What we can discern here is one of the most important characteristics of Péreli’s art. If she surrounds herself with reminders of the past and she is magnetically attracted to impressions of the old world, which are for her tokens of beauty and a period rich in values, her mind 9
