By Annabel Keenan

After joining Roberts Projects’s robust roster, Guyana-born, Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist Suchitra Mattai is establishing herself with a practice that blends influences ranging from European tapestry, craft, and Indian miniature painting to reconsider patriarchal and colonial narratives. In the year ahead, Mattai, whose works feature materials such as vintage saris and ribbon and range in price from $25,000 to $300,000, has solo shows at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, Socrates Sculpture Park, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Mattai’s work on view at Art Basel Miami Beach reflects her interest in the domestic sphere, exemplified in her skilled implementation of embroidery and fiber art.

Roberts Projects announced 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.

By Mark Westall

Roberts Projects now represents 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. 

By Jenny Wu

In the absence of power. In the presence of love at Roberts Projects, Los Angeles reimagines histories of migration and labour, sublimating colonial exploitation into a visual language of material abundance.

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.

By Kriston Capps

The new view elevates artists that the museum championed long before they were discovered by other institutions, among them Amy Sherald, who painted Michelle Obama’s portrait, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, who had a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art this year. Next fall, the women’s museum will mount the first East Coast survey of the Guyana-born artist Suchitra Mattai, exhibiting her mixed-media installations alongside historical artifacts from institutional collections that could shed light on her work.

By Vittoria Benzine

It’s been a blessing to be back exploring art in L.A. Every time I return it seems more’s happening, and I gain a richer idea of why. Numerous gorgeous shows by Suchitra Mattai, Hank Willis Thomas and more closed last week. We still have neighborhoods to see. Still, these beauties remain on view. 

By Urvi Kothari

Suchitra Mattai's "In the absence of power. In the presence of love" celebrates women of colour and re-imagine histories with large-scale textile installations at Roberts Projects.

A treasure trove of textiles! This was my initial response when I first interacted with the Indo-Caribbean multidisciplinary artist Suchitra Mattai’s solo exhibition housed in Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California.

By Harley Wong

At Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, the fruits of colonialism are on full display. Hanging from the ceiling are plump globes of braided fabric that resemble larger-than-life peach stones. From some, cascading blue strands burst outwards and fall towards the floor. Titled phala (fruit) (2023), the sculptural installation is named after a Sanskrit term that, in Hinduism and Buddhism, refers to the consequences of one’s actions.

By Katie White

The artist’s solo show “In the Absence of Power, In the Presence of Love” is now on view at Roberts Projects in L.A.

Artist Suchitra Mattai’s Los Angeles studio is a treasure chest of materials. Bins of fabrics and paints pop with color, alongside piles of shimmering notions like pearls and threads. The dazzling array of textures and colors form the basis of Mattai’s vibrant mixed-media paintings, tapestries, and soft-sculpture installations.  

By Paul Laster

Born in Guyana in 1973, educated at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and currently living and working in Los Angeles, Suchitra Mattai is a painter, sculptor and installation artist of Indo-Caribbean descent. A maximalist who constructs colorful assemblages from found objects, the vastly talented artist uses craft-based processes and materials to poetically tell visual stories that address the legacy of colonialism and relationships between culture and gender.

By Ayesha Le Breton

In material and form, artist Suchitra Mattai monumentalizes matriarchs across her expansive body of work. Crafts learned from her grandmothers’ embolden her artistic practice. “It becomes a way of connecting with them, but also a way of honoring them, that’s what’s important to me, especially in this show,” she tells Observer.

With embroidery, needlepoint, beading and found objects, the Indo-Caribbean artist inserts women’s handiwork into traditional landscapes, creating a combination that thoughtfully contends with a colonial past and is amended to celebrate women reminiscent of her roots.

By Matt Stromberg 

August is sometimes perceived as a slow month in the art world, but these 10 shows offer a wealth of experimentation and vitality. Suchitra Mattai draws on her Indo-Caribbean heritage, European landscape painting, and Indian miniatures to create soft sculptures and tapestries that confront and reframe colonial legacies. The artist uses sewing, embroidery, and beading — craft techniques passed down from her grandmothers — and reworks traditional artforms to feature Brown female protagonists, thereby making visible under-recognized networks of labor and resilience.

By Jenna Adrian-Diaz

Indo-Caribbean artist Suchitra Mattai’s practice is rooted in what she describes as “brown reclamation.” Tapestries made of saris, along with embroidery, needlepoint, and other women’s handiworks feature prominently in her debut solo exhibition at Roberts Projects Gallery in Los Angeles. There, her application of these processes supplants British colonial imagery and diasporic heroes with portrayals of regal South Asian women. On July 29, a panel of curators and art historians gathered there to pore over Mattai’s take on “transgressive materiality” in honor of her show. The city’s arts community turned out to hear from moderator jill moniz, PhD, Grace Aneiza Ali, Joanna Robotham, Suzanne Isken, and Mattai herself about how the trifecta of Craft, South Asian and Caribbean culture, and anti-colonialism color a rich body of contemporary art. 

By Steve Chiotakis

At the Roberts Projects Gallery on La Brea Avenue, Suchitra Mattai creates beautifully intricate tapestries, woven out of women’s saris, a traditional garment from India. As an Indo-Caribbean artist, Mattai’s works represent both her heritage and the broader South Asian diaspora. She calls this process “brown reclamation.”