Lydia Pettit

The body and the self as her home and castle – and a battleground. In search of a truce, the work of American artist Lydia Pettit oscillates between these two poles. It spans large-format paintings, quilts, finely wrought embroidery, and many stages in between. Paintings are extended or virtually smothered by textiles, while conversely, quilts and fabrics may feature painted segments. Drawing on this extraordinary range of techniques, Pettit achieves an evocative unity of form and content. Her work revolves around safeguarding and exposure. Palpability has a special roles to play in this context. It is about the actual touching of materials, about the caressing of bodies, including one’s own, but also about being touched in a figurative – and sometimes negative – sense. Also, Pettit’s painted and actual textiles memorialize the applied arts, for centuries the assigned bastion and only legitimate expression of female artistry.

Pettit herself describes the subject of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as one of her main concerns. She has come up with a startling metaphor to bring this topic closer to everyone: “Living with PTSD is like living in a haunted house.” In terms of language and imagery, Pettit creates impressive analogies for psychological states, addressing topics of trauma, body politics, and mental health. Thus, with even minute displays of emotion – cramped hands or anxious eyes – Pettit is capable of communicating complex psychological states and processes in her work. In any case, her work is all about the inward and the outward gaze, the self-perception and the perception of the others, and about which one really matters. For that, the artist doesn’t shy away from frequently resorting to her own body and countenance – as a metaphor for the bodies and selves of us all being both, a battleground and a refuge in today’s society.

Lydia Pettit was born in Maryland in 1991 and graduated from the city’s Institute College of Art with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting and photography in 2014. The same year, she and her partner founded Platform Arts Center in Baltimore, which supported young, regional and low-income artists in two ways. One was through affordable studio space, and the other was through a gallery that Pettit and her partner ran. In 2017, they closed the gallery – and Pettit turned her attention to her own practice. She moved to London, where she received her Master of Arts at the Royal College of Art in 2020. Today, Pettit works and lives in East London’s Bow area.

Pettit is currently preparing her first solo exhibition with Galerie Judin, which will be accompanied by a comprehensive exhibition catalogue published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König.