Suchitra Mattai Guyana, b. 1973

Rags to riches is a hanging sculpture by Guyana-born, Los Angeles-based artist Suchitra Mattai. Woven from assembled from a mixture of vintage saris and found fabrics, the work relates to Mattai’s heritage as an Indo-Caribbean woman. Generations of women in her family left South Asia to work as indentured servants in the Caribbean after slavery was abolished. The techniques and materials Mattai uses to create this body of work extend the legacy of those women into the realm of fine art. The name “rags to riches” literally references the layering of a new narrative on top of the stories of Mattai’s past, as hand me down clothing is transformed in her studio into an object of significant contemporary cultural value. Mattai uses materials in her works that possess embedded meanings in order to create a call and response between the materials and other conceptual or aesthetic aspects of the work. “I say I’m a storyteller,” says Mattai, “but the story does not only come from history. When you’re thinking about what constitutes memory, it’s part truth and it’s part myth. These sari pieces become a way of connecting women of the South Asian diaspora over time, because they’re of different vintages. Being part of a diaspora community, you want to connect back to this past you no longer occupy, or have tangible evidence of.”