Suchitra Mattai Guyana, b. 1973
one, 2022
Vintage saris, my Mother's sari, fabric and rope net.
126 x 180 in
320 x 457.2 cm
320 x 457.2 cm
8697
This textile work by Suchitra Mattai literally weaves together Mattai's ancestral heritage of Indo-Caribbean indentured servitude with an empowered vision of the present. Using vintage saris, including those belonging to...
This textile work by Suchitra Mattai literally weaves together Mattai's ancestral heritage of Indo-Caribbean indentured servitude with an empowered vision of the present. Using vintage saris, including those belonging to her mother, Mattai depicts a spectral dreamscape in which multiple generations of women appear to be convening above the horizon of a blue waterscape, a reference to the journey across the sea from India to Guyana, where Mattai was born. “This work offers a space for joy and reconciliation,” Mattai says. Employing materials and processes evocative of female domestic labor, Mattai ties together the lives and stories of generations of these women in her past, and all South Asian women who worked and lived and loved and struggled in the Caribbean during a time of colonial migration in the aftermath of slavery—lives and stories that provide the foundation upon which Mattai's life and work is based today.