Artist Peters + Curator Silva Collab at Frye for New, Timely Exhibit

One of the most rewarding aspects of working in the world of art is the collaborative relationships that happen along the way. Many times, this comes in the form of partnerships with other artists, but less talked about is the reciprocal relationship between artist and curator.

The harmonious pairing of artist Mary Ann Peters and Alexis L. Silva has culminated in a truly outstanding show of Peters’ work at Frye Art Museum, the edge becomes the center. In this show, based on research on displacement and the Middle Eastern diaspora, Peters conducts archival research in several countries (Lebanon, Mexico, and France), then uses her artworks to contextualize her findings. I sat down recently with Peters and Silva to discuss the impetus for this body of Peters’ work and the professional synthesis between artist and curator.

Silva, a Curatorial Assistant at Frye, was first approached by Chief Curator & Director of Exhibitions at the time, Amanda Donnan, to plan his inaugural curatorial show at the museum. It was Donnan who first suggested Peters, a staple in the Seattle arts community, and someone whom the museum had long wanted to showcase, as the artist for Silva’s debut.

Alexis L. Silva (ALS): “We had an initial studio visit where Amanda introduced us; after that, we just took it and ran with it. I think with everything that's going on right now, someone like Mary Ann and her work is just so important to underline in this moment. Her work is really this, I don't even want to say gentle nudge, but it's a nudge to springboard into learning about these events or these times or history that sort of live in the periphery. Either we push them to the periphery, or someone pushes them to the periphery for us.

“I think Mary Ann nudges us to look at those things in such beautiful ways. While a lot of Mary Ann's work focuses on a lot of specific events or themes, it does feel very universal in certain ways. And there's a lot in the work that everyone can pull from their own experience. I think it’s integral to have an exhibition like Mary Ann’s show right now. It’s been an incredible experience to see how people have reacted and interacted with the work in so many ways.”

Mary Ann Peters (MAP): “On my side, I had been poking Amanda, saying that I was interested in showing at the Frye for years, but didn’t get a response at the time, so I had back-burnered that possibility. At the same time, I was grappling with the fact that, as a regional artist with reputation—my work is in every collection in the city—how have I not been offered a solo show? It could be because I’m a troublemaker sometimes [laughs].

“I thought about it, and then just let it go. I started making work that was prescient for me personally, and kind of “going back to school for myself”, just an educational deep dive on Arab history and how it aligned with my family (Peters is a second generation Arab American) and pulling it out of nostalgia. So when I got an email one day from Amanda that said, “Would you be interested in showing these drawings?”, I thought, ‘Of course, I am. But I don't have them. I don't own them. I don't know how we'll do that.’ And she just said, ‘We'll figure that out.’”

ALS: [laughs] “And we figured it out!”

The works Peters refers to are from her series this trembling turf, an array of large-scale, extremely detailed drawings, using white ink on black clayboard to highlight the idea of negative space: What’s hidden? What, or who, is missing? These drawings often resemble exhaustively intricate maps; other times they could be ghostly images drawn in television static, an eerie phantasm that slips just out of our mind’s reach. The pieces have been loaned to the Frye from various private collections (including Seattle University), coming together for the first time in this exhibition.

this trembling turf (burst) (detail) 2019 by Mary Ann Peters. Courtesy of Seattle University.

The Evergreen Echo

MAP: “I didn’t want the show to be just the work I’ve already made. I wanted to make a new installation that was part of this series, impossible monuments, and they said yes. I probably tormented both Alexis and Amanda, because I just had this shell of an idea, and notes and things I wanted to look at and see if I could give some form to, but I didn’t have the piece in mind. That just started a series of conversations with Alexis. As we would share information about our histories in Seattle, we were having overlap, and I thought, well, this person is basically game for wherever I'm headed. And that started so many drawings—just drawing after drawing.

“I would say, ‘I think it's this,’ Alexis would come back and say, ‘I really like this part’. Or ‘You know what? I don't know about that’. We just did a give and take on my drawings, until I came to a place that looked like it was a possibility. Then I had to really buckle down and design it, get the really hard work done.

“We were both really conscious of world events. As a facility and as a curator, there's liabilities for choices you make, and same for me as an artist. I didn't want to make folly of the direness of certain aspects of the Arab world and the demise there. I was working on history. I wasn't working on just current events. I was bringing history to current events. I guess you would say that it could be that will the floodgates open? place.

“I really feel the responsibility of talking about current events, because it's happening to somebody as we speak. So we were both on the same page about that from different cultural backgrounds and affinities, because Alexis and I, we're second generation. We're not first generation. So we talked about that, that was a really interesting point of departure. And something I've learned to speak to when I've done talks is to make sure people understand this isn't my story.”

impossible monument: gilded takes up an entire wall of the museum. It’s constructed to look like a giant wood cabinet on legs, adorned in gold. The piece exudes aura, drawing the viewer in to inspect the wunderkammer inside. As you approach, the view shifts—some objects once hidden appear, and others are shrouded from view. The collection contained within includes survival blankets, keys, door plates adorned with ribbons—physical tokens that embody the idea of “home”, for people unable or unwilling to return to a place that was once theirs.

impossible monument: gilded 2024 by Mary Ann Peters / The Evergreen Echo

With the current political climate around the Middle East being so heated, and at times inspiring deep dissension, I asked if there had been any pushback about the subject matter in the show.

MAP: “In the beginning, before I had made anything, and we were confirming that I was doing this, the museum did a full staff meeting, and I said let's bring this up. It's kind of the elephant in the room. We could be approached about the topic, but it's not your job to explain that. It's my job. So if there's something that somebody's concerned about, I'm happy to answer their questions, but I don't want the staff to be put on the spot thinking that they have to have an answer to my interests, right?”

ALS: “Mary Ann's work, it's this way of moving people in a direction of really thinking about these events and people and experiences, and allowing people to do that research on their own. It's not laying it all out right in front of you, but it's making you think. And there's something really beautiful and poetic about that as well. People can draw their own opinions when they get home and go online and start doing their own research, if they choose to, but in the galleries, it feels like a more meditative space to just contemplate and really sit. I've even gotten feedback from one of our board members that it feels religious, he equated it to the Mark Rothko Chapel.”

MAP: “There's a little bit of a material shock and awe going on, with drawings and the installation. It is reverent. And it kind of had to be. I had talked with Alexis about this, but forever, I've been wanting to use gold, and I have been playing with it as a kind of skin over an image. I have this stash of survival blankets, and I've seen art pieces using them, and gold in all these paintings now. And I just thought, I’ve really got to think about this, and then came up with this idea that I could make this basically a backdrop from the survivors.

“When we were getting started, I said to everybody, my titles matter, the descriptions matter, the materials matter. It's got to all be out there, because for a viewer, that's a gift and an entry into work. The more you can tell them without telling them how to look at it, is, I think, a respectful thing to do. So we worked really hard. Alexis would write, and then I would write and look at it and I would say, ‘yeah, that's great. No, oh no, no, yeah’. I said, whatever it says that I said, it has to be my words, because I have to live with that. My hope is that people would have a newfound interest in a part of the world that they don't understand, and that it would intercept their biases ahead of time, and that there's future dialogue to be had from a visual foundation, that's a great hope.”

ALS: “In general, whenever I approach writing or even any kind of planning for an exhibition, I always ask myself, ‘Would my grandmother be able to access and enjoy this?’ And that's how I approach anything in my work. Mary Ann, too, thinks a lot about accessibility. I think we both had, in terms of just accessibility of language. That's a major topic in museums right now where people will walk into museums and they leave feeling stupid. At the Frye, we're working on it, but there's still work to be done.

“What I hope people experience is just really trying to understand this idea of varying history and what that means, not only in our physical world, but in our emotional and mental world. Especially the turf series. When I look at them, I really think about my internalized varied history, whether that be generational trauma, or trauma in general, or what that means to me, right? That's what I also mean about this meditative, contemplative space, right? Where I hope people are really thinking about what lives in the periphery, not only around us, but internally. What do we choose to put in the periphery for ourselves? Are we pushing it ourselves, or is someone pushing for us?”

We talked about the possibility of them working together again.

MAP: “If Alexis wanted to, are you kidding? Yes. An artist, Rafael Soldi, told me, ‘Marianne, pay attention to the young curators, because they're the ones that are going to go to bat for you.’”

ALS: “I would absolutely love to do a larger exhibition with Mary. I'm kind of jealous that Whatcom Museum was able to snag you and do such a large survey [August 2025]. Because it would be so great for people to understand more of the whole breadth of Mary Ann's practice.”

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Mary Ann Peters’ the edge becomes the center is showing at Frye Art Museum through January 05, 2025.