Solo exhibition at Richard Saltoun in London, United Kingdom, and in East Gallery, Norwich, United Kingdom, 2025
 

The exhibition title draws from philosopher Henri Bergson, who emphasized intuition and lived experience over strict rationalism in our understanding of reality. Bergson suggests that, since we cannot empirically prove another person’s internal experience, we must take a ‘leap of sympathy’—a leap of trust—to relate to them. This idea finds resonance in Perach’s exhibition, unfolding across the gallery’s three spaces like the chapters of a storybook, and bringing together a new body of tufted sculptures, drawings and glass sculptures. These works continue the artist’s investigation into the intersections of the psyche, gender, and identity through the primary medium of textiles—traditionally associated with the feminine and the domestic.

 

The installation features two large-scale feminine sculptures in rococo inspired dresses: one is a wearable piece, activated by a performer, while the other is controlled by a clockwork structure operated from within the wearable sculpture. This marks the very first time the artist is using robotics in her work. In Olimpia, she looks at the historical casting of the feminine form as frivolous, overly emotional and unruly, threatening religious and scientific categorization. As a result, it has been subjugated and coerced into alignment with the dominant narratives of each era. Perach draws connections between these Western systems of control and their impact on the female body, reflecting on what our contemporary attitudes reveal about broader societal anxieties and fantasies.

 

Inspired by E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Gothic fiction The Tales of Hoffmann, Olimpia takes its name from the automaton Olimpia, who becomes the object of a young man’s obsessive desire, as he believes her to be a real woman. Her mechanical nature is ultimately exposed during a violent struggle between her creators, which leads to her destruction. Perach focuses on the moment when Olimpia is first introduced to society by singing an area at a ball. She interprets Olimpia and Clara—two central figures in Hoffmann’s story— as representations of the self’s divided nature: Clara embodies societal norms of logic, while Olimpia represents the repressed, chaotic aspects subjected to patriarchal control.

 

This central piece is complemented by a series of drawings that depict fragments of Olimpia’s story, adding further context and narrative depth to both the sculptural work and the exhibition as a whole.

 

Another key body of work, The Uncanny Valley, comprises twelve tufted heads mounted on wooden structures, forming a macabre procession that guides viewers through the gallery. Many of these heads play on the idea of the gaze, featuring additional eyes, a single oversized eye, no eyes at all, or even zippered eyes—playing with the tension between visibility and concealment, perception and illusion. Inspired by the severed heads that surround Baba Yaga’s house in the Russian folktale Vasilisa the Beautiful, the work engages with themes of identity and transformation. Perach’s tufting technique imbues each head with a distinct yet eerily familiar presence, rendering them vessels of cultural memory while evoking the unsettling sensation of the uncanny valley—a term coined by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970 to describe the discomfort experienced when encountering a figure that appears almost human, yet disturbingly not quite.

 

A Leap of Sympathy furthers the artist’s exploration of how personal and cultural myths continue to shape perceptions of gender and identity, as well as the tensions between dominant Modernist “rational” thought and more speculative, magical approaches to interpreting and evolving within contemporary reality.

 

Text by Sonja Teszler