In this image, Suchitra Mattai plays with what types of images we associate with tropical places, what we think of as a depiction of love, and what we think of as a Postcolonial aesthetic. The image is constructed atop a page ripped out of The Grammar of Ornament, a colonial era design book critiqued for making European claims over global aesthetic languages. The figures are inspired by a Saturday Evening Post clipping, with the white figures reimagined as an Indo-Caribbean mother and child. It's an intimate moment, but couched in that imaginary narrative of the tropical. This piece belongs to a series Mattai debuted in 2023, memorializing super heroines as embodiments of feminine empowerment. A lot of these works celebrate the power of women, while simultaneously reimagining colonial narratives. “These elements are tied together, so I find it hard to extricate them,” says Mattai. “The wonder of art is that it doesn’t have to be one element. Stories are complex. I want to portray that in the works.”