Suchitra Mattai Guyana, b. 1973

Suchitra Mattai’s intrepid garden is an abstracted landscape woven from vintage saris. The forms and colors in the tapestry create a scene reminiscent of an untamed wilderness. Alcoves cleaved in the matting hold white sculptures aloft in the negative space, like enchanted portals into a hidden world ruled by mysterious icons. Evoking colonial-era, European pastoral figures, some of the sculptures are found objects; others were cast by Mattai; and several are made out of salt. Mattai introduced salt into her practice as part of her solo exhibition Osmosis at Kavi Gupta | Elizabeth St. Thinking about the saltwater ocean migrations that have shaped her family’s heritage, Mattai has both a scientific and a poetic interest in osmosis, a process that involves the migration of water molecules from one region to another. In a manner of speaking, osmosis is about equilibrium, or the transferral of something to achieve a new balance. Salt is an osmotic trigger; Mattai employs it as both a sculptural medium and a chemical instigator of aesthetic transformation. The openings in this tapestry relate to Mattai’s interest in myth and folklore. She is looking at the ancestral legacies of her Indo-Caribbean family and imagining how she can empower new stories that will be layered atop those existing narrative. “The niches are spaces of fantasy and new folklore, like portals into a past and into a future,” says Mattai. “The garden is a space for rebirth.”