Michella Perera: Entangled in the History of the Idea
Pallas Projects/Studios are pleased to present Michella Perera鈥擡ntangled in the History of the Idea , the second exhibition of our 2025 Artist-Initiated Projects programme.
On still dry days, the air above the hot tarmac melts forming a curdling shape that drifts back and forth. From a distance it resembles the reptilian gait of a monitor that swings its body as it moves, flicking its tongue to gather the scent of sweat, spice and hair oils. Another hour has passed and again the person that leaves the house is unidentifiable in mismatched clothes covering their entire form from the sun. Their Bata slippers crack metronomically until they walk right up to the young rice, drying on the heated road. The rice-keeper places their bare calloused feet methodically on one corner in anticipation of thousands of tiny movements beneath their soles.
The pungent reminder of this afternoon鈥檚 durian stagnates through the out-kitchen, refusing to escape into the fresh air. Like a tired traveller, it lingers in the heat, bathing in the sun. There is a calmness reserved for the day after a full moon, when the Dhane leftovers that occupy shelves in the fridges waive the culinary hold on Aunty鈥檚 hands. Instead she meanders in her garden, using human lady fingers to inspect vegetative lady fingers. Names in her country are like tributaries, eventually flowing into a much more persuasive river. 鈥淥kra鈥� she reminds herself but the word carries so little of the characteristics of the pointed pod.
Entangled in the History of the Idea invites viewers into a speculative world built from an archive of shared storytelling, particularly within South Asian immigrant communities. Michella Perera鈥檚 acrylic paintings explore the paracosmos of a series of unidentified and highly pigmented women as they realise a more personal and intimate relationship to cultural material, forgoing traditional practices. Through their hands and feet, they extrude tactile knowledge, delineating an idiosyncratic understanding of their heritage and indigenous plant lore. Relief textile patterns punctuate the paintings, reminiscent of traditionally carved architectural elements, now reconfigured in the feminine practice of textile manipulation. Through these peculiar rituals the female protagonists reclaim the agency to create and structure their world - a place suggestive of ancestral worlds, compiled from nuanced cultural memories.
An arrangement of ceramic vessels preface an unseen ceremony. Ranging from instruments to measuring devices, they form the objects through which the vibrant protagonists actualize their individuated myths. The biophilic decorations, sensual in form, are indicative of a sorority (sisterhood) of human, cultural and botanic agents intersecting to produce an image of fossilised abundance. The vessels are suggestive of a performance, though they remain unused, relegated to an archival state. This archival silence speaks to a contemporary disassociation with the natural world, emphasising a deeper desire to regain a lost ecocentrism.
The exhibition draws its title from a quote by Paul Gilroy in The Black Atlantic 鈥淭he especially crude and reductive notions of culture that form the substance of racial politics today are clearly associated with an older discourse of racial and ethnic difference which is everywhere entangled in the history of the idea of culture in the modern West.鈥�
Perera is drawn to the constantly shifting practice of myth-making that arises from personal interactions, movement, miscommunication and translation. The ensuing worlds develop adjacent to notions of 鈥渁uthenticity,鈥� drawing its power, not from a prescriptive adherence to historic ideas but an evolving understanding of the self in relation to cultural material.
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Pallas Projects/Studios are pleased to present Michella Perera鈥擡ntangled in the History of the Idea , the second exhibition of our 2025 Artist-Initiated Projects programme.
On still dry days, the air above the hot tarmac melts forming a curdling shape that drifts back and forth. From a distance it resembles the reptilian gait of a monitor that swings its body as it moves, flicking its tongue to gather the scent of sweat, spice and hair oils. Another hour has passed and again the person that leaves the house is unidentifiable in mismatched clothes covering their entire form from the sun. Their Bata slippers crack metronomically until they walk right up to the young rice, drying on the heated road. The rice-keeper places their bare calloused feet methodically on one corner in anticipation of thousands of tiny movements beneath their soles.
The pungent reminder of this afternoon鈥檚 durian stagnates through the out-kitchen, refusing to escape into the fresh air. Like a tired traveller, it lingers in the heat, bathing in the sun. There is a calmness reserved for the day after a full moon, when the Dhane leftovers that occupy shelves in the fridges waive the culinary hold on Aunty鈥檚 hands. Instead she meanders in her garden, using human lady fingers to inspect vegetative lady fingers. Names in her country are like tributaries, eventually flowing into a much more persuasive river. 鈥淥kra鈥� she reminds herself but the word carries so little of the characteristics of the pointed pod.
Entangled in the History of the Idea invites viewers into a speculative world built from an archive of shared storytelling, particularly within South Asian immigrant communities. Michella Perera鈥檚 acrylic paintings explore the paracosmos of a series of unidentified and highly pigmented women as they realise a more personal and intimate relationship to cultural material, forgoing traditional practices. Through their hands and feet, they extrude tactile knowledge, delineating an idiosyncratic understanding of their heritage and indigenous plant lore. Relief textile patterns punctuate the paintings, reminiscent of traditionally carved architectural elements, now reconfigured in the feminine practice of textile manipulation. Through these peculiar rituals the female protagonists reclaim the agency to create and structure their world - a place suggestive of ancestral worlds, compiled from nuanced cultural memories.
An arrangement of ceramic vessels preface an unseen ceremony. Ranging from instruments to measuring devices, they form the objects through which the vibrant protagonists actualize their individuated myths. The biophilic decorations, sensual in form, are indicative of a sorority (sisterhood) of human, cultural and botanic agents intersecting to produce an image of fossilised abundance. The vessels are suggestive of a performance, though they remain unused, relegated to an archival state. This archival silence speaks to a contemporary disassociation with the natural world, emphasising a deeper desire to regain a lost ecocentrism.
The exhibition draws its title from a quote by Paul Gilroy in The Black Atlantic 鈥淭he especially crude and reductive notions of culture that form the substance of racial politics today are clearly associated with an older discourse of racial and ethnic difference which is everywhere entangled in the history of the idea of culture in the modern West.鈥�
Perera is drawn to the constantly shifting practice of myth-making that arises from personal interactions, movement, miscommunication and translation. The ensuing worlds develop adjacent to notions of 鈥渁uthenticity,鈥� drawing its power, not from a prescriptive adherence to historic ideas but an evolving understanding of the self in relation to cultural material.
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