Suchitra Mattai Is Reclaiming Her Past Through Art
Suchitra Mattai‘s studio in Los Angeles is a haven for her artistic expression of fabrics, paints, and colors. It is in this room that Mattai developed her latest, and inaugural, solo exhibition at Roberts Projects in Los Angeles. Titled In the Absence of Power, In the Presence of Love. the collection, both literally and figuratively, is a texture of narratives.
Invoking Caribbean, European, and Asian influences, Mattai combines and contextualizes them into her own artistic voice. Instead of bending to them, she supersedes them.
a cosmic awakening 2023. Courtesy of Roberts Projects
Inspired by her ancestral roots, Mattai draws from her Indo-Caribbean familial tradition. In doing so, she creates a one-of-a-kind mixed media installation that acts to reclaim her material heritage. In Mattai’s world, the fixtures, canvases, and tapestries are a place of ‘brown heroines.’ Her exacting embroidery, needlepoint, and handiworks are supposed to supplant and contend “with a colonial past and is amended to celebrate women reminiscent of her roots.”
For Mattai, more personally, her saga begins with her great-grandparents. Forced to relocate from Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to Guyana, South America by the British empire, the couple became indentured laborers. Despite the difficulties of sugar plantation life, Mattai’s great-grandmother passed on her skills in sewing, embroidery, and other textile crafts. With this history, Roberts Projects says, “with every strip and stitch, Mattai’s family makes up the fabric of her art.”
there once was a girl who had a little curl, 2023. Courtesy of Roberts Projects
Her application of familial techniques thus becomes an exploration of time and space — using her past to reimagine her present and future. As a woman of Indian and Caribbean descent, Suchitra Mattai’s In the Absence of Power, In the Presence of Love is a liberation of “Cosmic Awakening.”
either side of time, 2023. Courtesy of Roberts Projects
Using both ‘feminine’ art style and female subjects, Mattai deconstructs the perception of women’s material bodies. The materials associated with the domestic sphere become inverted: “braiding shimmering saris into a topography of prosperity. Decorative tassels become nods to domestic life, often embodied by her maternal ancestors but rarely represented. Meanwhile, golden tinsels are a less subtle ode to Caribbean and South Asian adornment.”
the unveiling, 2023, Courtesy of Roberts Projects
As such, using the weight of cultural significance, Mattai’s collection contributes to the dialogue of history. By re-writing colonial history, it materializes that which has been absent or non-existent from her (and other’s) story. It presents a future that fully appreciates its past.
The exhibition is located at 442 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, 90036, United States.
Contact at +1 323 549 0223.
Featured Image Via Roberts Project