Born in Guyana, the Indo-Caribbean artist, Suchitra Mattai, has devoted her work to depicting the violent colonial history endured by her family. Her art pays tribute to the overlooked voices of women from the Indian diaspora. The celebrated multidisciplinary artist’s major solo exhibition, “Suchitra Mattai: Myth from Matter” will be presented by the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington D.C.
The exhibition will feature approximately 40 mixed-media masterpieces and large-scale textile installations. Her creations, which explore themes of memory, myth, and visual culture, eloquently challenge colonial and patriarchal narratives, shining a light on the hidden histories of her ancestors, who arrived in Guyana as indentured laborers from India during British colonial rule.
This exhibition, marking Mattai’s first major solo museum show on the American East Coast, coincides with three other solo presentations nationwide.
Using a numerous and vibrant mix of richly colored saris, vintage needlepoints, book pages, jewelry, tinsel, bindis, beads, and various treasures, Ms. Mattai crafts layered textile installations, sculptures, collages, and paintings. Her art blends materials and symbols from different eras and places, and these juxtapositions spark a fascinating visual dialogue between old and new, East and West, and history and mythology. This exhibition showcases her work alongside historical objects from Europe and South Asia.
NMWA Director, Susan Fisher Sterling, says, “We are honored to show the extraordinary work of Suchitra Mattai this fall. Her powerful tapestries provide rich narratives that speak to history, identity and migration.”
Currently residing in Denver, Colorado, Ms. Mattai holds an MA in South Asian art and an MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Pennsylvania. Ms. Mattai’s work brings marginalized people back into histories from which they have been excluded. In pieces like as we know it, as we dream it (2023), she transformed found tapestries by darkening the figures’ skin and adding bright embroidery, refocusing attention on those who were exploited.
She also highlights the often-overlooked work of women by transforming vintage textiles into vibrant scenes of joy. In future perfect (2023), she reimagines Fragonard’s Young Girl Reading by adding a jeweled headdress and pink tassel and sewing brown thread, a technique called, ‘brown reclamation,’ over the figure’s skin.
The mesmerizing part of her artwork is how she confronts erasure, reclaims narratives, and envisions equity through her art. A beautifully illustrated catalog will accompany this highly anticipated exhibition, which is being held from September 20, 2024, to January 12, 2025.
