The figure pictured here is inspired by a South Asian woman in a found, antique photograph. Rendered in graphite, this heroine looks out from a frame built out of pages torn from The Grammar of Ornament, a colonial-era design book notorious for co-opting the visual languages of colonized cultures. She is surrounded by a forest of found wooden trees. This piece belongs to a series Suchitra 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.”