Join Kavi Gupta on Saturday, November 12 from 4–7 PM for the opening recepetion of Osmosis, a solo exhibition of new multi-media works by Indo-Caribbean American artist Suchitra Mattai. At 4:30 PM, Mattai will be joined by Lauren Haynes, Director of Curatorial Affairs and Programs at the Queens Museum, for an exhibition walkthrough.
Thinking about the saltwater ocean migrations that have shaped her family’s cultural and geographic heritage, Mattai has both a scientific and a poetic interest in the process of osmosis, which involves the migration of water molecules from one region to another. Salt is a trigger for the osmotic process, which, in a manner of speaking, is about the emergence of something and the loss of something.
Mattai’s work is in the collections of Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Bentonville, AR, USA; Jorge Pérez; Olivia Walton; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO, USA; and Kiran Nader Museum of Art, Delhi, India, among many others. Recent exhibitions include Suchitra Mattai: Breathing Room, Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID, USA; and State of the Art 2020, Crystal Bridges Museum/the Momentary, Bentonville, AR, USA.
Photo credit: Derrick Beasley
Lauren Haynes is Director of Curatorial Affairs and Programs at the Queens Museum. Previously she was the Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Prior to joining the Nasher, Haynes was Director of Artist Initiatives and Curator, Contemporary Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Momentary in Bentonville, Arkansas. Haynes led the curatorial team for State of the Art 2020,which opened at both Crystal Bridges and the Momentary in February 2020. Haynes’s recent curatorial projects include Beyond the Surface: Collage, Mixed Media and Textile Works from the Collection (2022); Kenny Rivero: The Floor is Crooked (2021); Crystal Bridges at 10 (2021); Sarah Cain: In Nature (2021); Crystals in Art: Ancient to Today (2019) and The Beyond: Georgia O’Keeffe and Contemporary Art (2018). Before joining Crystal Bridges, Haynes spent nearly a decade at The Studio Museum in Harlem. As a specialist in contemporary art by artists of African descent, Haynes curated dozens of exhibitions at the Studio Museum and contemporary art institutions in New York. Haynes was a 2018 Center for Curatorial Leadership fellow and a recipient of a 2020 ArtTable New Leadership Award. Since 2022, Haynes has been a member of the board of the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) and AAMC Foundation.
