Suchitra Mattai Guyana, b. 1973

Suchitra Mattai’s quicksand is a fiery red tapestry suspended between two found wooden bed posts. The tapestry is woven from vintage saris and ghungroo bells, materials which relate to Mattai’s South Asian heritage. The abstracted imagery in the tapestry is reminiscent of a liquescent realm where everything is falling, or melting, into the middle. The central figure is being inundated; devoured; pulled into the hole and amalgamated. This imagery speaks to Mattai’s disorienting experience of living between two cultures, as a Guyana-born woman descended from Indo-Caribbean indentured servants and now living and working as an artist in the United States. “It’s this disembodied feeling, like the ground between your feet isn’t always stable,” Mattai says.