Suchitra Mattai: Herself as Another

s u c h i tra m attai

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 1

1/26/22 1:28 PM

—2—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 2

1/26/22 1:28 PM

S UC H I TRA M ATTA I h e r s e l f a s a n ot h e r FEBRUARY 10–MARCH 12, 2022 E S S AY BY G R A C E A N E I Z A A L I

H O L L I S TA G G A R T 5 2 1 W E S T 2 6 T H S T R E E T, 1 S T F LO O R , N E W YO R K , N Y 1 0 0 0 1

—3—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 3

1/26/22 1:28 PM

—4—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 4

1/26/22 1:29 PM

Hollis and I usually stay in the Tri-state area for studio visits, but when David Houston

showed us Suchitra’s work, we knew we had to meet with her in person and flew to Denver,

Colorado. Drawn in by her artistic vision and multi-disciplinary use of materials, we decided to pair her with Adrienne Elise Tarver in an exhibition titled History Reclaimed that opened in

March of 2020. Putting their works in conversation felt right given that both artists work with

installations and engage with histories of subjugation through the lens of re-imagination

rather than pure loss. For the show, Suchitra wove together hundreds of vintage saris sourced from family and friends to create a large-scale installation that hung from the ceiling like a textile waterfall.

I have a fond memory of Suchitra sitting surrounded by the saris during installation. She caught

a scent of one of the saris and warmly remarked, “It smells like my aunt!” For me, this captures the spirit of her works: The intimate histories and living memories carried by domestic

materials—like saris—as well as her collaboration with women who aren’t able to participate

in the art world. The COVID-19 pandemic hit right after the opening of this two-person show, foiling our plans, but it is partially why I am so excited to present this new body of work

by Suchitra.

This group of works expands on Suchitra’s commitment to narratives of the “other” while maintaining her hallmark incorporation of found objects and domestic materials into lush,

tactile compositions. Broadening the definition of “otherness” to encompass all who remain

on the fringes, Herself as Another continues her artistic intervention into postcolonial histories. Suchitra’s work always stuns in its innovative use of everyday materials, and this exhibition is no exception. I want to thank David Houston, Executive Director of the

Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art, for introducing us to Suchitra’s work. I am also grateful to Suchitra for the opportunity to collaborate on this exhibition and thankful for the dedication of the entire gallery staff in bringing this project to life.

PAUL EFSTATHIOU

—5 —

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 5

1/26/22 1:29 PM

grace aneiza ali

S U C H I T R A M ATTA I ’ S U N RAVE L I N G S IT’S AN OTHERWORLDLY LANDSCAPE. A topography made up of vibrant colors

reminiscent of carnival—reds, golds, blues, and greens. Instead of valleys, ridges, ripples, peaks, mountains, and bodies of water that mark most topographies, this one’s highs and lows, its shadows and light, are formed by patterns and shades in vintage saris. In the artist’s

capable hands, these saris have been woven, layered, braided, tucked, and folded luxuriously

into each other. They are enticing, soft and delicate to the touch. They are also a study of the power of fabric to seduce, transform, and build worlds. Suchitra Mattai’s An Alien Spirit with a Breathtaking View (2022, pl. 7), one of the central works featured in Suchitra Mattai: Herself as Another, renders an unknown world with spectacular features we have not yet

seen but long to. Structurally, it calls to mind those fantastical glimmering landscapes by El Anatsui in which he shapes discarded aluminum bottle caps, intricately connected by copper wire, into topographical metal tapestries. So, too is Mattai’s unrestrained imagination

evident as she fashions and shapes a new world via her sari tapestries and collage. The

language “breathtaking view” in the work’s title is precise—not only is Mattai world-building, but she also weaves the vantage points to view that world.

A fitting description for Mattai is that she is a prodigious artist, one who is deeply

concerned with the skill, craftsmanship, artistry, detail, intricacy, intimacy, labor, and love invested in a vintage patchwork tapestry or a silk sari or a crocheted lace that transforms

the material from a sequence of threads into a work of art. Mattai’s personal commitment to the slow, meditative, and increasingly elusive handmade process—weaving, knitting, crocheting, sewing, needlepointing, embroidering, which have been buoyed across generations and cultures largely by the hands of women—reflect the artist’s acute consciousness of the hands that manifest visible and invisible work. She wants to give voice to original makers.

Mattai, too herself, has always been making, and she has been doing so with a sense

of urgency even before the artworld came calling. This reverence for the malleability of

—6—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 6

1/26/22 1:29 PM

fabrics can be seen in several of the works simply in the ways the artist honors the threads, both tangible and metaphorical, in the saris woven to form An Alien Spirit with a Breathtaking

View or the fringe fibers of Wonder Plus Fear (2021) or the beige and brown embroidery floss that shade the female figure’s skin in The Theater of Joy (2021, pl. 4). With each punc-

ture of embroidery, each woven thread, each knitted yarn, each surgically-placed stitch, Mattai calls attention to the ways artistic production rooted in handmade traditions have

been excluded, dismissed, trivialized, or outright erased from art historical discourse as

“domestic” or “feminine.” Instead, the artist elevates their value and centers them squarely within the history of art.

Mattai, like so many of us in this twenty-first-century world, is a migrant body. After

leaving her birthplace Guyana in South America at three years old, she spent several years shifting from Nova Scotia, Canada; Udaipur, India; and in the United States, from Philadelphia

to New York to Minneapolis and finally to Denver, where she is now settled. The artist’s migra-

tory paths through Guyana, Canada, and the United States—places where she has attempted to make a home—as well as her transitory journeys throughout India, the Caribbean, the Americas, the Middle East, and Europe—geographic points she has spent considerable time in passing through—chart a dynamic artistic practice.

Mattai’s practice is imbued with a deep knowing of the conditions of the other and the

consequences, personal and political, of being othered. Often in her works, she simultane-

ously invokes her own contemporary migrations as well as an ancestral migration origin story started long before she left Guyana in 1977. That of her Indian ancestors brought by the

British from India to the Caribbean, beginning in the 1830s and throughout the early 1900s, to work as indentured servants on British Guiana’s sugar cane plantations:

My family, who first came as Indian indentured servants to British Guiana, is part of a history of ocean voyages to foreign lands by means of contracts of bondage. And so, as an artist, much of my

practice is driven by this idea of an invented, idealized “homeland.”

My artwork is characterized by disconnected “landscapes” that are unreal but offer a lingering familiarity.1

These multiple migrations have informed an oeuvre teeming with laborious detail, texture, and materiality—perhaps symbolic of all the things we carry, tangible and intangible, across

borders. As a result, Mattai is adept at weaving together a bounty of objects suggestive of turbulent and disruptive experiences. For example in previously exhibited works such as

—7 —

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 7

1/26/22 1:29 PM

Fig. 1 El Dorado after All, 2017. Thread, faux fur, leather, zippers, cord, ribbon, pompoms, and chain on found woven seaweed rug, 56 3/8 × 87 5/8 inches (143.19 × 222.57 cm).

Courtesy of artist

El Dorado after All (2017, fig. 1),2 she intervenes in the historical myths of the Americas, reimagining the mythical “city of gold” that ignited sixteenth-century Spanish European

explorations and exploitations throughout northern South America in what is now Brazil, Columbia, Guyana, and Venezuela. Drawing from a found photograph hypothesizing the possible Guyanese location of this lush world, Mattai rendered El Dorado after All an

idealized, imagined, abandoned, symbolic landscape. She weaved onto a large-scale seaweed rug a cavalry of objects and materials—thread, faux fur, leather, zippers, cord, ribbon, pompoms, chains. The work reflects her concern with the liminal space of disorientation when one transitions through multiple cultural spheres as she has. “By hand-embroidering

this idealized (and fictitious) version of Guyana,” she remarked, “I am weaving together both personal and historical traces to create a mythical past. Like all myths, this past is

part fiction and part truth.”3 The found image of a hypothesized El Dorado that Mattai

used as a point of departure in her making of El Dorado after All is further emblematic of the delight she takes in disrupting and re-appropriating centuries-old texts and photographs that display colonialist viewpoints. For example, in collage works In Her Head (2022, pl. 6) and Safe Space (2021), Mattai incorporates pages of bright Indian patterns and motifs taken from The Grammar of Ornament, a lavish design folio of color illustrations,

—8—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 8

1/26/22 1:29 PM

Fig. 2 Imperfect Isometry, 2019. Videos of border walls (Jerusalem/Palestine, US/Mexico) and prison wall, vintage sari tapestry, chalk drawing, and spinning found Kalba merry-go-round, dimensions varies.

Courtesy of the artist

first published in 1856, that explores notable decorative arts of several cultural periods.

In pairing these decorative designs with vintage magazine illustrations of scenes of female subjects, Mattai has developed a visual language to question, revise, and dismantle.

Embedded throughout her voluminous oeuvre are the histories, memories, and visual

codes of Mattai’s Indian heritage. A most notable example was her commission for the 2019

Sharjah Biennial. Responding thoughtfully and with great care to the Biennial’s urgent curatorial charge, Look for Me All Around You, Mattai joined participating artists who created

“an open platform of migrant images” in a fraught moment when “borders and beliefs are under constant renegotiation” and “in response to [unprecedented] human and material displacement.”4 Mattai collected saris worn by women in India, United Arab Emirates, and Ca-

ribbean to weave the large-scale tapestry Imperfect Isometry (2019, fig. 2). Like many of the more recent sari tapestries that have come to characterize Mattai’s thriving practice,

Imperfect Isometry is an extraordinary and towering work that remarks on the historical

system of Indian indentured servitude, the kala pani (dark waters) Atlantic crossings that brought Indians to the Americas and shaped the Indian diaspora in the West, and the modern-day exploitations of migrant labor.

—9 —

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 9

1/26/22 1:29 PM

Similarly, in the sari tapestry An Alien Spirit with a Breathtaking View, Mattai

follows through with a commitment to use her work as a narrative device to draw attention to histories that are either under told, mistold, or misrepresented. These form a

prolific body of work that significantly underscores the artist’s concern for the movements of peoples, the potential of art to speak to who and what gets left behind, and what survives and what is mourned. In doing so, she is in a constant and important

conversation, in both subtle and overt ways, about how we navigate through and out of migration, displacement, and borders.

In many of Mattai’s works, the stories particularly of women of the Indian diaspora are

present. The collage works, such as In Her Head, Safe Space, The Theater of Joy, and Wonder

Plus Fear, all introduce a main protagonist: an Indian woman or girl. Mattai frequently centers

this figure as a way to pay homage to the multiplicity of Indian women’s lives and their mobilities. She also considers these collages, whether large or small in scale, as monuments that bridge women of the past with women of the present and future. Their protagonists are

not merely historical or estranged, however. They are often references to the community of women who continue to infuse Mattai’s own life and practice. In the artist’s careful hands, these women subjects are made, unmade, and remade again.

In her studio, Mattai can be seen easily reaching for a bounty of objects found or pro-

cured from thrift shops, auctions, estate sales, vintage stores—embroidery, needlepoints, macramé works, jewelry boxes, found photographs, teacups, works on paper, ghungroo

bells, bindis, boas, beads, faux gems, cords, appliques, garlands, masks, old magazines, and so on. While some of the artist’s objects are strangers to her, or come with stories yet to be

uncovered, many of them carry the lived experiences of those close and familiar. The metallic ghungroo bells, for example, that are woven into An Alien Spirit with a Breathtaking View are a musical instrument and ornament worn on the ankles of Indian classical dancers. The

trinket-sized Kathakali facemask in The Theater of Joy is donned by Kathakali performers—

another major form of classical Indian theater and dance. They are both important cultural references to revered Indian art forms as well as a sweet nod to the Mattai’s sister who is a student of the Indian classical dance Bharatanatyam.

While notable objects like the ghungroo bells or Kathakali mask are easily discoverable

in Mattai’s works, others, like the subtle insertion of a paper wedding invitation from the artist’s cousin in a Safe Space might be easily missed. Yet, from the playful to the irrever-

ent, to the symbolic and deeply coded, her penchant for these kinds of objects and acts of gathering reveals her economical eye. It illustrates too that she is both an accidental and

intentional collector of things as much as it conveys she is drawn to a kind of making that

—10—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 10

1/26/22 1:29 PM

respects the rigor and labor of the maker’s hand. What it all shows is that to be immersed in the details of Suchitra Mattai’s work is to witness her breathe life into the seemingly unremarkable only to unravel them into monuments of beauty.

GRACE ANEIZA ALI is a Curator and Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and

the Department of Art History’s Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies Program at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. She serves as Curator-at-Large for the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute in New York. Her book Liminal Spaces: Migration

and Women of the Guyanese Diaspora (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2020) explores the art and migration narratives of women of Guyanese heritage.

Notes 1. Suchitra Mattai, in “Revisionist,” Liminal Spaces: Migration and Women of the Guyanese Diaspora, edited by Grace Aneiza Ali (Cambridge: UK, Open Book Publishers, 2020). Available online at books.openbookpublishers. com/10.11647/obp.0218/ch12.xhtml#_idTextAnchor230 (accessed January 10, 2022).

2. El Dorado after All has been exhibited in Liminal Space in 2017, curated by Grace Aneiza Ali, at the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute in New York and in No Ocean Between Us: Art of the Asian Diasporas in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1845–present in 2021, curated by Adriana Ospina, at AMA | Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, D.C. and at several institutions as part of AMA’s traveling exhibition.

3. Artist statement submitted by Suchitra Mattai for her work El Dorado after All (2017) featured in the group exhibition Liminal Space, curated by Grace Aneiza Ali, at the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, New York, June 17 to November 30, 2017. Available online at artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/liminal-space/GgJy2wYqU_ fXJA?hl=en (accessed January 10, 2022).

4. Claire Tancons, “Look for Me All Around You,” in Sharjah Biennial 14: Leaving the Echo Chamber Guidebook, 19.

—11—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 11

1/26/22 1:29 PM

—12—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 12

1/26/22 1:29 PM

—13—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 13

1/26/22 1:29 PM

P L AT E 1 .

herself as another,

2022

acrylic, gouache, cord, trim, earrings, and family necklace 66 x 72 in (167. 6 x 182. 9 cm)

—14—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 14

1/26/22 1:29 PM

—15 —

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 15

1/26/22 1:29 PM

P L AT E 2 .

the warm embrace,

2022

vintage saris, fabric, ghungroo bells and boa dimension varies

—16—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 16

1/26/22 1:29 PM

—17—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 17

1/26/22 1:29 PM

P L AT E 3.

shadow of a woman with vajra (divine weapon),

2022

embroidery floss, acrylic, faux fur, and trim on vintage fabric 36 x 38 in ( 91. 4 x 96. 5 cm)

—18—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 18

1/26/22 1:29 PM

—19 —

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 19

1/26/22 1:29 PM

P L AT E 4 .

the theater of joy,

2021

embroidery floss, beads, faux gems, fabric, vintage beaded fabric, and found theater mask from india 4 8 x 54 in (121. 9 x 137. 2 cm )

—20—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 20

1/26/22 1:29 PM

—21—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 21

1/26/22 1:29 PM

P L AT E 5.

the light we know and the dark we keep,

2022

vintage saris, fabric and tassels 122 x 115 in (309 . 9 x 29 2. 1 cm )

—22—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 22

1/26/22 1:29 PM

—23—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 23

1/26/22 1:29 PM

P L AT E 6.

in her head,

2021

nineteen th-century colonial print, book page from the grammar of ornament , bindis, gouache, and fiber trim on wood 16 x 16 in (40. 6 x 40. 6 cm )

—24—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 24

1/26/22 1:29 PM

—25—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 25

1/26/22 1:29 PM

P L AT E 7.

an alien spirit with a breathtaking view,

2022

vintage saris, fabric, cord, ghungroo bells, and garland 7 6 x 80 in (193 x 20 3. 2 cm )

—26—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 26

1/26/22 1:29 PM

—27—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 27

1/26/22 1:29 PM

P L AT E 8.

fitting in,

2022

found vintage objects, fabric, and trim dimension varies

—28—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 28

1/26/22 1:29 PM

—29—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 29

1/26/22 1:29 PM

SUCHITRA MATTAI EDUCATION

2003 MFA, Painting and Drawing, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 2001 MA, South Asian Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 1994 BA, Statistics, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2021 Art Basel, Kavi Gupta, Miami, FL

Untitled Art Fair, K Contemporary, Miami, FL

The Armory Show, Kavi Gupta, New York Realms of Refuge, group exhibition, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL

Song of Songs, group exhibition, curated

by Rachel Thomas, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Unit London, London Breathing Room, solo exhibition, Boise Museum of Art, ID Fragments of Epic Memory, group exhibition, curated by Julie Crooks, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto Rites of Passage, group exhibition, Unit London, London Home, group exhibition, Sugar Hill Children’s Museum, New York

Reunion, group exhibition, Hollis Taggart Southport, Southport, CT

Look Again: A Survey of Contemporary Painting, group exhibition, Hollis Taggart Southport, Southport, CT History Reclaimed, two-person exhibition with Adrienne Elise Tarver, Hollis Taggart Contemporary, New York LA Art Show, K Contemporary, Los Angeles

State of the Art II, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art/The Momentary, curated by Lauren Haynes, Bentonville, AK Cultural Encounters: Art of Asian Diasporas in Latin America and The Caribbean, 1945–Present, traveling group exhibition, Art Museum of the Americas (Organization of American States), Washington, DC

2019 Sharjah Biennial 14: Leaving the Echo Chamber, curated by Claire Tancons, Omar Kholeif, and Zoe Butt, Sharjah Art Foundation commissioned project, UAE Installation of Imperfect Isometry, solo installation, Denver Art Museum/ Biennial of the Americas, Denver, CO

Women’s Work, group exhibition, Pen and Brush, New York

Fugue, solo exhibition, Vault residency, Denver, CO

Woven Stories, group exhibition, Lancaster Museum of Art and History, CA Each of Us Is Several, two-person exhibition, Platte Forum, Denver, CO Small Is Beautiful, group exhibition, Flowers Gallery, London

Moments towards the Other, group exhibition, Black Cube (a nomadic art museum)

2018 Pulse Art Fair, K Contemporary, Miami, FL

No Oceans Between Us, group exhibition, San Antonio Museum of Art, TX

Sweet Asylum, solo exhibition, K Contemporary, Denver, CO

Fresh Earth, group exhibition, Aicon Gallery, New York

Sugar Bound, solo exhibition, Center for the Visual Arts, Metropolitan State University of Denver, CO

See and Be Seen, group exhibition, Praise Shadows, Brookline, MA

Landfall, solo exhibition, GrayDuck Gallery, Denver, CO

2020 Innocence and Everything After, solo exhibition, K Contemporary, Denver, CO

Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, commissioned project, CO

2017 Denver Art Museum/SkyHouse commission, solo exhibition/ installation, CO

Liminal Space, Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, New York

Nice Work If You Can Get It, group exhibition, RedLine Contemporary Art Center, Denver, CO Axis Mundi, group exhibition, Platte Forum, Denver, CO

2016 Monumental, group exhibition, RedLine Contemporary Art, Denver, CO Typecast, Hillyer Art Space, Washington, DC

Art of the State, group exhibition, Arvada Center, Wheatridge, CO

Visitation, group exhibition, GrayDuck Gallery, Austin, TX

Drawing Never Dies, group exhibition, RedLine Contemporary Art, Denver, CO The Intrepid Garden, two-person exhibition, Buell Theater, Denver Performing Arts Center, CO

Revisionist, solo exhibition, Artworks Loveland, Loveland, CO SELECTED PRESS

Cate McQuaid, “Restoring Power with Portraits at Praise Shadows Art Gallery,” The Boston Globe, January 21, 2021, bostonglobe.com/2021/01/13/arts/ restoring-power-with-portraits-praiseshadows-art-gallery/.

Ray Mark Rinaldi, “Artist Suchitra Mattai’s Latest Exhibit Takes a Hard Look at a Difficult Year, and Envisions a Path Forward,” The Denver Post, July 28, 2020, denverpost.com/2020/07/28/ artist-suchitra-mattais-latest-exhibittakes-a-hard-look-at-a-difficult-yearand-envisions-a-path-forward/.

Corinne Anderson, “Suchitra Mattai Expands Our Sense of History and Identity in New Solo Show,” 303 Magazine, July 23, 2020, 303magazine. com/2020/07/suchitra-mattai-kcontemporary/.

—30—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 30

1/26/22 1:29 PM

Isis Davis-Marks, “History gets reclaimed at Hollis Taggart Gallery,” Widewalls, June 8, 2020, widewalls.ch/magazine/ history-reclaimed-hollis-taggart-gallery.

Kwon Mee-Yoo, “Sharjah Biennial Breaks Barriers of Perception,” The Korea Times, May 5, 2019, koreatimes.co.kr/www/ culture/2020/02/145_268529.html.

Gregory Volk, “A Survey of American Art That Isn’t Just Coastal,” Hyperallergic, March 7, 2020, hyperallergic.com/ 546373/state-of-the-art-2020-at-crystal-bridges-museum-of-american-art/.

Sarah Cascone, “Editors’ Picks: 19 Things Not to Miss in New York’s Art World This Week,” Artnet News, March 2, 2020, news.artnet.com/art-world/ editors-picks-march-2-2020-1785762.

“‘Women’s Work: Art & Activism in the 21st Century’ at Pen + Brush, New York,” ARTnews, April 22, 2019, artnews. com/2019/04/22/womens-work-artactivism-in-the-21st-century-at-penbrush-new-york/.

Sarah Cascone, “Editors’ Picks: 19 Things Not to Miss in New York’s Art World This Week,” Artnet News, April 8, 2019, news.artnet.com/art-world/ editors-picks-april-8-2019-1498255.

Ann Binlot, “The 14th Sharjah Biennial Tells the Stories Ignored by Popular Culture,” Document Journal, April 3, 2019, documentjournal.com/2019/04/ the-14th-sharjah-biennial-tells-thestories-ignored-by-popular-culture/.

Tom Seymour, “Sharjah Biennial 14 is raising the emirate’s cultural cache,” Wallpaper Magazine, March 21, 2019, wallpaper.com/art/sharjah-biennial14-leaving-the-echo-chamber.

Katrina Kufer, “Sharjah Biennial Is One of the Best Art Happenings This Season,” Harpers Bazaar Arabia, March 17, 2019, harpersbazaararabia.com/art/fairsand-events/leaving-the-echo-chambersharjah-biennial.

Shailaja Tripathi, “Making Way for New Stories,” The Hindu, March 14, 2019, thehindu.com/entertainment/art/ making-way-for-new-stories/ article26533342.ece.

Osman can Yerebakan, “Our Highlights from the 14th Sharjah Biennial: Leaving the Echo Chamber,” Cultured Magazine, March 12, 2019, culturedmag.com/ sharjah-biennial/.

Ryan Warner, Colorado Public Radio, interview on Colorado Matters, February 18, 2019, cpr.org/showsegment/artist-suchitra-mattaiencourages-the-tough-conversationsabout-migration-and-diaspora/.

Corinne Anderson, “Denver Artists to Watch in 2019,” 303 Magazine, January 15, 2019, 303magazine.com/ 2019/01/denver-artists-to-watch-in2019/.

Michael Paglia, “Twelve Best Art Shows of 2018,” Westword, December 26, 2018, westword.com/arts/denverstwelve-best-art-shows-of-201811074146.

Wayne Alan Brenner, “’Suchitra Mattai: Landfall’ at grayDUCK Gallery: The Artist’s Channeled Chaos Vividly Explores Relationships between the Natural and Human Worlds,” The Austin Chronicle, December 21, 2018, austinchronicle.com/arts/2018-12-21/ suchitra-mattai-landfall/.

Michael Paglia, “Review: Suchitra Mattai Explores Her Heritage in CVA’s Sugar Bound,” Westword, September 12, 2018, westword.com/arts/suchitramattai-explores-her-complex-heritagein-cvas-sugar-bound-10767356.

Noelani Kirschner, “Portraits of Colonialism: Suchitra Mattai,” The American Scholar, August 20, 2018, theamericanscholar.org/suchitra-mattai/.

Joshua Ware, “Other Narratives Other Histories,” Entropy Journal, April 18, 2018, entropymag.org/other-narrativesother-histories-on-suchitra-mattaissweet-asylum/.

Corinne Anderson, ”Denver Artist Makes Downtown Gallery ‘Feel Like Home’ in Newest Exhibition” 303 Magazine, April 10, 2018, 303magazine. com/2018/04/suchitra-mattai-kcontemporary/.

AWARDS AND LECTURES 2021 Logan Lecture, “Migration, Diaspora and Displacement,” with Shirin Neshat and Hew Locke, Denver Art Museum, CO

Visiting Artist, University of Colorado, Boulder 2020 Interview with curator Rebecca Hart, Untitled Art Fair OVR programming, Miami, FL

“Holding Space-Bridging Fiber Art and Racial Identity,” Surface Design Association

“A Woman’s Diaspora and Liminal Spaces” (virtual), Lux Art Institute, San Diego, CA 2019 Logan Lecture, Denver Art Museum, CO 2014–16 RedLine Denver Artist in Residence 2003 Angelo Savelli Award, Penn School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 2002 Royal College of Art Fellowship, London 2000 U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, Full Tuition American Institute of Indian Studies, FLAS Fellowship, Udaipur COLLECTIONS

Born Hotel, Denver, CO

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR Denver Art Museum, CO

InterContinental, Minneapolis, MN Kiran Nader Museum, Delhi, India Jorge Perez, Miami, FL

Tampa Art Museum, FL

Taylor Art Collection, Denver, CO TIA Art Collection, Santa Fe, NM Olivia Walton, Bentonville, AR

Visiting Artist, Cranbrook, Bloomfield Hills, MI

—31—

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 31

1/26/22 1:29 PM

SUCHITRA MATTAI is a multi-disciplinary artist who lives and works in Denver, Colorado.

She was born in Guyana, South America, and has lived in Halifax and Wolfville, Nova Scotia,

Philadelphia, New York, Minneapolis, and Udaipur, India. Mattai often employs culturally specific materials and artistic processes associated with the domestic sphere, such as

weaving and embroidery. Her work addresses the legacies of colonialism and the interconnections between gender, labor, and historical narratives. Through painting, fiber, drawing,

collage, installation, video, and sculpture, she interrogates narratives of “the other,” invoking fractured landscapes, present day heroines and heroes, and reclaiming cultural artifacts, which are often colonial and domestic in nature.

Mattai has exhibited widely across the United States as well as internationally. Her

work was featured in State of the Art 2020 at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art/

The Momentary. In 2019, she was commissioned to create a large-scale, multi-media installation for the Sharjah Biennial. She has also recently exhibited at Denver Art Museum/Biennial

of the Americas in Denver, Boise Museum of Art, San Antonio Museum of Art, Lancaster

Museum of Art and History in Lancaster, California, and Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago. Her

work is held in the collections of the Denver Art Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and Tampa Museum of Art. Mattai received both her MFA in Painting and Drawing and MA in South Asian art from the University of Pennsylvania. Her work has been reviewed in publications such as Hyperallergic, Document Journal, Widewalls, Cultured Magazine,

Denver Post, The Boston Globe, and Wallpaper Magazine. She is represented by Hollis Taggart,

K Contemporary in Denver, and Unit London.

This catalogue has been published on the occasion of the exhibition “Suchitra Mattai: Herself as Another” organized by Hollis Taggart, New York, and presented from February 10–March 12, 2022.

All Artwork © Suchitra Mattai Essay © Grace Aneiza Ali ISBN: 978-1-7378463-7-6 Publication © 2021 Hollis Taggart All rights reserved.

Reproduction of contents prohibited.

Edition of 500

115790_r2_TAG061_Suchitra Mattai_interior.indd 32

Frontispiece: Suchitra Mattai, 2020.

Courtesy of the artist Page 4: An Alien Spirit with a Breathtaking View, 2022 (detail) Pages 12–13: Herself as Another, 2022 (detail) Hollis Taggart 521 West 26th Street 1st Floor New York, NY 10001 Tel 212 628 4000 Fax 212 570 5786 www.hollistaggart.com Catalogue production: Kara Spellman Copyediting: Jessie Sentivan Design: McCall Associates, New York Printing: Point B Solutions, Minneapolis, MN Photography: Wes Magyar, Denver, CO

1/26/22 1:29 PM