A waterfall of braids is how Suchitra Mattai, an Los Angeles based Guyanese-American artist, covered the walls of the Joslyn Art Museum’s Riley CAP Gallery. Each rope-like band is made with used saris, simulating Kaieteur Falls, a waterfall in Guyana, with a pool of shattered glimmering glass on the floor. The exhibition is a collapse of time and speaks to the geographical and cultural ruptures of indentured labor in the Americas. Mattai and I spoke about this, and how she uses fiber arts not only as a method to represent the past, but speaks to its lingering effects in the present. 

Born in Guyana, Suchitra Mattai descends from Indian indentured servants who Britain forcibly relocated to the Caribbean in the nineteenth century. Using colorful South Asian saris, Mattai explores stories of migration and the search for identity that diasporic communities often experience. Her site-specific installation in the Riley CAP Gallery takes inspiration from Guyana’s Kaieteur Falls, one of the largest single-drop waterfalls in the world. The exhibition features hundreds of braided saris that encircle a pool of glass shards Mattai gathered following a break-in at her former studio. Mattai believes that her repurposed materials hold mysteries tied to their origins and cultural applications. 

The Fundação Bienal, which organizes the Bienal de São Paulo, has announced the 120 artists who will be participating in the event’s thirty-sixth iteration, to launch on September 6. The Bienal is titled “Not All Travellers Walk Roads—Of Humanity as Practice” and is inspired by Conceição Evaristo’s poem “Da calma e do silêncio” (Of Calm and Silence). The conceptual team in a statement said that they had looked to bird migration patterns, including those of the red-tailed hawk, the ruff, and the Arctic tern, when selecting participating artists.

with abundance we meet is a new site specific installation by artist Suchitra Mattai at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Presented in the rotunda of the museum, it features large, fruit-like sculptures—called phala (Hindi for "fruit")—made from braided and woven vintage saris. Suspended from the ceiling, the phala evoke associations with fertility, wombs, and ancestral spirits, and serve as a reflection on the artist’s South Asian heritage. 

Indo-Caribbean artist Suchitra Mattai unravels stories of the past to imagine new futures. In her work, she is deeply influenced by the history of her ancestors, who were brought from India to work as indentured laborers in Guyana. She works with materials that honor the labor of women—including vintage saris, beads, and embroidery—and uses techniques passed down through generations. At the center of the exhibition, Mattai reimagines her grandparents’ home in Guyana, the core of her migration story. From there, a memory journey told through textiles and sculptures spills out into the rest of the gallery.

Touch, smell, listen, and discover a little something about the world and yourself in our immersive multi-sensory maze at Kidspace Museum in Pasadena. Navigate a color-changing maze challenge, “see” with your hands, and challenge your friends at our Smell-o-Phone booth. Immersive artworks and experiments will flood your senses and spark your curiosity. Wired for Wonder is presented in collaboration with Getty’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide.

Roberts Projects congratulates Suchitra Mattai, producer and Adam J. Graves, director on the nomination of Anuja, for an Academy Award, Best Live Action Short Film. Anuja tells the story of a gifted nine-year-old girl who, alongside her sister Palak, faces a life-changing opportunity that tests their bond and mirrors the struggles of girls worldwide.

I was in the early stages of developing a coming-of-age film, when Suchitra Mattai (my wife and producing partner) happened upon an unsettling statistic: globally, nearly one in ten children under the age of fifteen is subject to child labor (i.e., labor that is detrimental to one’s health, development, and education). – Adam J. Graves

By Kriston Capps

Suchitra Mattai uses vintage saris and vivid found materials to weave exquisite tapestries that challenge fixed histories about art and migration.

People like to send the artist Suchitra Mattai fabrics. Her mother, who lives in Edison, N.J., home to one of the largest South Asian populations in the United States, collects saris from secondhand shops and mails them to her daughter, who lives in Los Angeles and is of Indo-Caribbean descent. Friends, relatives and friends of relatives all send their finds: silks, fringe, trim and more.

Join us for a conversation as Roberts Projects brings together artists Anthony Cudahy, Suchitra Mattai, and mosie river for a thought-provoking discussion on how their creative practices reflect the transformative legacy of alchemy, moderated by Associate Director Alexandria Ryahl.

A Garden of Promise and Dissent inaugurates The Aldrich’s newly renovated campus and Sculpture Garden. This intergenerational group exhibition of twenty-one artists explores the animation of the “garden” as a site of private expression (poetics) and public action (praxis). Gardens offer solace, community, nutrition, and well-being; they provide safe spaces for rebellion and empowerment; they alleviate climate change, revitalize, and widen access to land use–providing localized food resources and alternative medicine. Gardens symbolize growth, death, and regeneration as well as represent care, resilience, and hope. 

By Lakshmi Rivera Amin

Apparently, my grandmother has kept her wedding sari tucked away in a chest at the foot of her bed for most of my life. One sleepy morning, she plucked it from a sea of fabric and gently set it on her carpeted floor, deciding that it was time to sift through her hidden collection of sumptuous silken saris and give them their regular aeration. I gawked at the faded sari, a legendary familial artifact of sorts that I’d only seen in photographs since childhood. She shrugged and continued pulling garments from the chest. The shimmering threads basked in the sun and breathed for the first time in months as each stitch unraveled a flood of memories; Ba knew exactly when and where she’d worn all of them. Every sari had a story to tell.

Interview by Jan Garden Castro

Suchitra Mattai’s multidisciplinary work explores how memory, myth, and oral traditions can be harnessed to unravel received narratives rooted in patriarchal and colonialist systems. By re-imagining the past, she opens up the future. Drawing on Indian miniature painting, European tapestry, and craft-based practices like embroidery and weaving, the Indo-Caribbean artist postulates a “future space” of alternative mythologies that celebrate and monumentalize the experiences and labor of brown women. Within this space, standard binaries—between old and new, East and West, history and mythology, labor and leisure—can be placed in conversation, questioned and reconfigured. 

By Gameli Hamelo

While she was still a high school student in Metuchen, New Jersey, Suchitra Mattai found herself puzzled by a history class she was taking. The course was called World History, but despite its name, it was clearly about the West, not the entire globe. Years later, she realized she had encountered an “obviously absurd gap” in the course’s curriculum.

By Sarah Cascone

The vibrancy of the large-scale textile installations, mixed-media paintings, and colorful sculptures of Suchitra Mattai (1973–) draws in the viewer, helping the Guyanese artist tell complex stories about migration and colonialism.

Last month, Mattai opened her first solo show in Washington, D.C., at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA). Her work looks to write brown people back into a global history from which they have been left out, through a practice she calls “brown reclamation.”

By Mark Jenkins

When introducing viewers to her Indian heritage, Suchitra Mattai is also reconstructing it for herself. The title of the multidisciplinary artist’s ambitious National Museum of Women in the Arts exhibition, “Myth From Matter,” encapsulates her process. Mattai repurposes Indian artifacts — often old saris — to weave a vision of her ancestral homeland.

Betye Saar and Suchitra Mattai are some of many participating artists to donate works for auction in support of the Harris Victory Fund. The Artists for Kamala online sale will open on October 1st and conclude on October 8th. The sale will have both an auction component as well as some pieces sold on a fixed price basis. All funds raised will go directly to the Harris Victory Fund. 

By Salomé Gómez-Upegui

Overlooked narratives lie at the center of Suchitra Mattai’s extraordinary artworks. A Guyanese-American artist of South Asian descent, she creates monumental installations, vibrant mixed-media compositions, and elaborate textile sculptures that spotlight the voices of women, so often erased from history, while also reflecting on the past of her ancestors, once brought from India to Guyana as indentured laborers by colonial British settlers.

Combining richly colored textiles, found objects, beads, and more, multidisciplinary artist Suchitra Mattai (b. 1973, Georgetown, Guyana) explores themes of history, identity, and belonging. The forces that lead certain stories to be remembered, or forgotten, are central to her art. Drawing on her Indo-Caribbean roots, Mattai weaves together personal narratives, collective mythologies, and colonial history. Her two- and three-dimensional works offer a reimagined vision of the past that centers the perspectives of women and people of color, especially those from Southeast Asia.

By Ben Davis

The Guyanese American artist (b. 1973) regularly works in fabric—indeed, one of her signature materials is cut-up saris. As for subject matter, she draws on her family’s history as part of the South Asian diaspora in the Caribbean, as with her recent show at ICA San Francisco with included a vibrant colorful sculptural recreation of her grandparents’ home.

The master’s degree program in Curatorial Practice (MACP) at the School of Visual Arts in New York City is pleased to announce its Artists Roundtable special events for fall/winter 2024.

The Artists Roundtable, an international forum for leading practitioners, is hosted by Kate Fowle, faculty member of the MA Curatorial programs at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Suchitra Mattai, a multidisciplinary American artist of Indo-Caribbean descent, creates mixed-media paintings, sculptures, and installations that shed light on untold histories. Based in Los Angeles.

By Anh-Minh Le

In her solo show at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, Suchitra Mattai renders memories into vibrant mixed-media creations that reflect her Indo-Caribbean heritage in their materials and motifs. 

“The whole exhibition is about how we remember,” Mattai told the Chronicle before the opening reception of her exhibition in June. “If you think of memory as ephemeral — as fragmented, as chosen — we sometimes choose what we want to remember and what we want to forget. There’s a breaking and a building of forms and ideas.”

By Kat Barandy

Backdropped by the New York City skyline, a collection of vibrant artworks by Suchitra Mattai is scattered across the Socrates Sculpture Park. The exhibition, we are nomads, we are dreamers, transforms the park into a space of contemplation and an exploration of identity, diaspora, and the reclamation of history. This sculptural installation is part of a busy year for the LA-based artist, represented by Roberts Projects, whose work continues to challenge and reframe the boundaries of art, culture, and memory.

By Kate Meadows

It’s difficult to imagine that Socrates Sculpture Park, located on the waterfront of Astoria, Queens, was once a landfill. The illegal dumping site was repurposed in 1986 by a coalition of artists led by Mark di Suvero and has since transformed into a riverside haven. At the height of summer, the park is lush with greenery and teeming with local visitors. For the past several decades, Socrates has dedicated its five acres to exhibiting large-scale works, which remain free to access by the public year-round. Director of exhibitions and curator, Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas chose to devote the park’s 2024 programming to themes of migration, mapping and ecology as a means to challenge traditional notions of public art.

Interview by Eva Recinos

"I think being an artist is something you know that you are, and you might not recognize it for a long time because I think there are these preconceived ideas about what it is to be an artist and engaging in a professional practice. But the thing is, as we all know, it’s super complicated to be an artist. How do you have the time to make all the work? How do you fund the work? How do you grow your practice? These are all things that, when I was younger, seemed like a mystery. I think if you just trust in the art and the process, that is the only thing you can control. And the other things fall into place. I know that sounds maybe silly, but I do feel like whatever limited time you have, whatever resources you have—if you use that time to make, and to make your work better, and to develop new ideas and curiosities, that’s super important too."

Interview by Elisa Carollo

In “she walked in reverse and found their song" at ICA SF, Mattai examines the power of memory in the creation of personal stories.

Cultural artifacts are vessels of collective memories: symbolic elements that a community can identify with to find a sense of belonging and some of the most powerful statements on the status of a specific society. With a labor-intensive practice drawing from her Indo-Caribbean lineage, artist Suchitra Mattai creates works that evoke, preserve and translate traditions passed through generations, using the potentialities of materials to reactivate forgotten or erased histories and memories.

By Emily Wilson

In her exhibition at San Francisco’s Institute of Contemporary Art, artist Suchitra Mattai explores her own immigration story and those of her ancestors.

When people leave their home countries, Mattai said, they can carry only so many physical possessions. That makes their memories all the more precious as ties to their past lives. In recalling them, their identities clarify and are reinforced, but they can also shift, thanks to the fragility and malleability of the mind.

The five-acre strip that comprises Socrates Sculpture Park in New York stretches along the East River as it flows towards the Atlantic Ocean. It’s this position en route to the sea – with its suggestion of travel and migration – that inspired Suchitra Mattai’s exhibition for Socrates, which exclusively shows newly commissioned work (until 25 August). Outdoor exhibitions tend, for obvious reasons, to feature sculptures made from durable materials such as metal or stone, but here the Guyanese American artist has chosen to use fabric, weaving strips of vintage saris collected from women of the South Asian diaspora. A series of abstract stem- or pod-like forms are dressed in the colourful weavings while textile orbs hang suspended, fruit-like, from nearby trees. The sun, wind and rain will, of course, change these works, which is partly the point: a metaphor for experiences of journeys across oceans and adaptation to local environments.

By Rima Suqi

“Suchitra Mattai: We are nomads, we are dreamers” is the artist’s first New York City solo show, drawing upon “themes of identity, migration, and memory.” It’s currently on view at Socrates Sculpture Park, in a lovely spot on the East River waterfront, and features  a series of large vibrant sculptures made from vintage saris collected from women of the South Asian diaspora. Mattai also created a series of seven smaller sculptures that are hanging from trees in a grove on the property, as well as a billboard featuring a thirty-foot collage. On view through August 25, 2024

Interview by Emily Wilson

In this episode, Emily chats with south asian multidisciplinary artist Suchitra Mattai.  Suchitra, born in Guyana and now based in Los Angeles, discusses her journey and the influences behind her artwork. She details her move from a background in statistics to a career in art, highlighting how her work addresses themes of memory, labor, migration, and colonization. Suchitra shares insights about her solo exhibit, 'she walked in reverse and found their songs' at ICA San Francisco, which explores her ancestors’ forced migration and personal history through installations made of used saris. The episode also includes discussion about how she combines different materials to tell stories and reconcile her multicultural experiences. Additionally, Suchitra talks about the impactful art pieces and places that inspire her creative process.

By Kate Mothes

Situated along the East River in Long Island City, New York, a new outdoor public installation by Suchitra Mattai invites visitors to consider how history, heritage, and cultures connect across land, oceans, and time. We are nomads, we are dreamers at Socrates Sculpture Park comprises six monumental forms evocative of continents or ancient monuments, cloaked in woven vintage saris. Reflecting themes of femininity and fertility, a series of seven sack-like sculptures are suspended from branches in a nearby grove of trees.

By Jackson Arn

Make your way to Socrates Sculpture Park, in Queens, where Suchitra Mattai has brought a collection of newly commissioned work. The most purely pleasurable parts of “We are nomads, we are dreamers,” her solo exhibition (through Aug. 25), are six large textile sculptures that look like giant tree stumps covered in rainbow bark (actually hand-woven together from vintage saris), at the park’s center. If a breezy, slightly sweaty Sunday morning stroll in late June were a work of art, it might look like a Mattai.

By Lisa Yin Zhang

Socrates Sculpture Park is yet another underrated green space in the city, with sculptures that erupt vertiginously from tufts of grass along undeveloped waterfront. Beautiful as they are — shiny fabrics ripple in wave formations around their sides — Suchitra Mattai’s sculptures are grotesque as well: Their mirrored surfaces reflect sunlight like warning beacons, and their black bases appear as if twisted uncomfortably out of their own skin. Inspired by the East River’s passage into the Atlantic Ocean, host to myriad migration journeys including that of Mattai’s family, the sculptures recall topographical masses on a slow course, embodying both the promise of new possibilities and the threats of such collisions.

In this eclectic grouping, the artists are not thematically linked, although each brings the familiar into the work, whether through images or materials of our urban and natural world.

The exhibition Suchitra Mattai: Bodies and Souls explores migration, matriarchy, and materiality. Mattai uses found objects, such as vintage saris, to create colorful monumental installations. She wraps, braids, stitches, and weaves fabrics together as allegories for historical and personal narratives. For her first museum exhibition in Florida and the Southeast, Mattai will premier new installations in conversation with recent works, highlighting the artist’s ongoing investigations of the past and present.

We are nomads, we are dreamers is a solo exhibition of newly commissioned works by Suchitra Mattai that celebrates the migratory oceanic journeys of past, present, and future diasporic communities. Join in for a Garden Party in the Park in celebration of our 2024 Summer Exhibition Suchitra Mattai: We are nomads, we are dreamers. Featuring a conversation with the artist and curator, dance performance, and refreshments inspired by the exhibition’s garden. This event is free to attend.

Suchitra Mattai was born in Georgetown, Guyana, and immigrated to Canada as a young child. The history of her ancestors—brought from India to work as indentured laborers in Guyana—deeply influences her practice. Using techniques passed down through generations, she weaves materials marked by the past into a collective story of migration and gendered labor. In this exhibition Mattai turns inward, examining the power of memory in the creation of her own stories: sometimes factual, sometimes fantastical, with divergent pieces collapsing and combining into something new.

Interview by Alison Stewart

Suchitra Mattai's first solo show in New York City features a series of enormous, soft sculptures made from vintage saris. The exhibition pays homage to the artist’s Indo-Caribbean ancestors and the stories of many Queens residents. Mattai joins us alongside curator Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas to discuss the show, titled We are nomads, we are dreamers, which is on display through Sunday, Aug. 25.

Taking the 1990s as its cultural backdrop, Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today is the first major group exhibition in the United States to envision a new approach to contemporary art in the Caribbean diaspora, foregrounding forms that reveal new modes of thinking about identity and place. Over 20 artists are featured in this exhibition, many of whom live in the Caribbean or are of Caribbean heritage.

Forecast Form is anchored in the concept of diaspora, the dispersal of people through migration both forced and voluntary. Here, diaspora is not a longing to return home but a way of understanding that we are always in movement and that our identities are in constant states of transformation.

By Terry Nguyen

Multidisciplinary artist Suchitra Mattai’s monumental woven tapestries will be on display at Socrates Sculpture Park throughout the summer. “We are nomads, we are dreamers” features newly commissioned works that explores themes of cultural transmigration and diasporic inheritance linked to Mattai’s Guyanese heritage. According to Mattai, her process is “not exactly weaving but an invented process … similar to embroidery,” as she told Artnet; she entwines vintage saris (some inherited from family members) with a mass of scarves, tassels, and other found fabrics into large vibrant tapestries, which she wraps around the base of large metal armature, whose stainless mirror surfaces are positioned to reflect the sky above; they range from 35 to 41 feet long. Opens May 11.

We are nomads, we are dreamers is a solo exhibition of newly commissioned works by Suchitra Mattai, celebrating the migratory oceanic journeys of past, present, and future diasporic communities. Inspired by the Park’s position along the East River, which flows into the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, Mattai’s installation features a series of monumental, soft sculptures made from vintage saris. Activated by monthly dance performances, this exhibition pays homage to the artist’s Indo-Caribbean ancestors and the stories of many Queens residents.

By Lita Barrie

One of the first galleries in L.A. to focus on African-American artists like legends Betye Saar and Kehinde Wiley, Roberts Projects has continued to represent significant black artists and help them develop their careers – from the emerging to the established. This tightly-curated selection of works subvert the meaning of “oasis” from diverse perspectives exploring the relief we seek from hardship.

Roberts Projects is pleased to present a tightly-curated selection of works that interpret and subvert the meaning of 'oasis' from a diverse range of perspectives. Works by contemporary artists including Amoako Boafo, Daniel Crews-Chubb, Suchitra Mattai, Collins Obijiaku, Ed Templeton, and Brenna Youngblood conjure sensations of relief that nurture the human spirit while contemplating the hardships from which we seek refuge. Major hishlight sof the booth include Betye Saar's Oasis and Suchitra Mattai's between oceans. 

Suchitra Mattai is featured in Common Threads, an exhibition at Apple Park. Her work, show pony, weaves together vintage saris to celebrate the spirit and labor of women, shaping a future that is imagined but not yet fully visible. 

By Maximilíano Durón

Suchitra Mattai is among the 15 Anonymous Was A Woman 2023 winners. Anonymous Was A Woman is a grant-making nonprofit that has awarded over $7 million to women-identifying artists since 1996. The list of nearly 300 past recipients is a who’s who of today’s leading artists, many of whom received the award at critical points in their careers.

At the booth of Roberts Projects, visitors are greeted with a meticulously curated selection of artworks, each a standout in its own right, making it a challenge to pinpoint just a few highlights. Jeffrey Gibson—who will represent the U.S. at next year’s Venice Biennale—is renowned for his large-scale beaded paintings and mixed-media works, and presents a new piece at the booth: LOVE ME WITH ALL MY FAULTS (2023), priced at $120,000. At the other entrance is the more muted but equally striking Crossers (2023) by Luke Agada, selling for $12,000. As if distorted by heat, an image appears wavy and shimmering, as if rippling in a heat haze, with lines bending and colors blending in a mirage-like effect.

Roberts Projects is honored to announce representation of Suchitra Mattai. This announcement follows the gallery’s first exhibition of Mattai’s work – In the absence of power. In the presence of love. – this past July.  

The Guyana-born artist explores how memory, myth, and oral traditions can be used to unravel colonial and patriarchal narratives. Drawing from European tapestry traditions, Indian miniature painting, and other craft-based traditions like embroidery and weaving, she imagines a “future space” where new mythologies are formed to celebrate and monumentalize the experiences and labor of brown women. 

The eclectic patterns, tasselled fabrics and intricate embroidery in Suchitra Mattai’s exhibition deliver a striking first impression. A handful of the artist’s largescale works dominate the three rooms of Roberts Projects housing her show. The most prominent of these is a group of massive, hanging soft-sculptures collectively titled phala (fruit) (all works 2023). These oversize ornaments are connected to the ceiling by silver chains and gold cords; some are spherical, and others are teardrop shaped. Each is wrapped in a mesh of saris woven so tightly it is almost impossible to tell where individual garments begin and end.

The show takes pains to get its arms around the region’s multifarious history, opening with Suchitra Mattai’s An Ocean Cradle, 2022, a broad tapestry woven of fragments of silky Indian saris. A conceptual seascape, it nods to South Asian heritage on various islands and in Guyana, where indentured Indian labor was imported to replace enslaved people when the practice was abolished in British Caribbean colonies in the 1830s.