Suchitra Mattei's solo exhibit, a vibrant exploration of her Indo-Guyanese heritage, opened to the public on April 9 at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. As visitors enter through the museum's art deco doors, they are greeted by a burst of color: vibrant yellows and pinks reminiscent of South Asian palaces and intricately embroidered sarees. This striking entryway offers an immersive glimpse into Suchitra Mattei's exploration of her introspective familial and cultural identity through art.

Suchitra Mattei, an interdisciplinary visual artist, was born in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1973. Her art incorporates textiles, pearls, and found objects, reflecting her ancestral roots: her great-grandparents journeyed from Uttar Pradesh to Guyana to work on British sugar plantations. Suchitra's artistic path was significantly influenced by her mother and grandmothers. Her maternal grandmother, a seamstress, instilled in her the skills of sewing and embroidery.

Upon entering the exhibit, visitors are immediately drawn to Pappy’s house (2024). According to Suchitra, “this was always going to be my center.” The installation invites touch, with "walls" made of deconstructed, worn sarees, primarily from India, gifted by her mother and her mother’s friends in New Jersey, home to a significant South Asian community. Pappy’s house evokes the typical colonial house-on-stilts design, an architectural staple in Guyana built from timber to avoid flooding and cope with the humid, tropical heat. 

However, Mattei's house is constructed from aluminum and trussed with tinsel. She stated “The house is an ode to the homeland but is impenetrable.” Jose Diaz, Susan Brotman Deputy Director of Art, noted that “the sarees are gifted with purpose, an embodiment of history, that they aren’t washed.” Suchitra emphasizes that the fabric retains the scents of perfume and spices. The sarees are adorned with beaded trim and imbued with the energy and spirit of the South Asian women who wore them while cooking, cleaning, working, and tending their homes.

The sarees that are woven throughout the exhibit are representations of feminine labor, and embedded with beads, bindi, and speak of the indentured Indo-Guyanese experience. Many of the techniques Mattei uses, like embroidery and beadwork, are traditionally creative crafts and adornments that celebrate beauty and festivities. There are intersections of indentured labor in works like A Rich Life Lived (2022-2024), which is an assemblage of wooden clothespins, feathers, cord, and worn sarees that are an homage to marital and domestic struggles. The sea wall (2024) represents the many Indo-Guyanese women who arrived by ship and became domestic laborers, often isolated, overlooking the vast Atlantic Ocean, embedded with pearls, representing the wall of separation from the homeland. The artwork is embedded with Mattei’s wedding drapery, pearls, bindi, and representative Indian garments. The sea wall represents the women of Suchitra’s community, her lineage, and her future.

Suchitra’s art exists within a 'third space,' a convergence of South Asian, Western European, and indigenous Caribbean aesthetics. This blending creates a unique cultural hybridity evident in her choice of materials. In A Rich Life Lived (2022-2024), Mattei employs a material stratification that echoes Mark Rothko’s color-blocking techniques, creating layers of meaning through her arrangement of materials.

In her self portrait (2024), Mattei evokes memories of her mother braiding her hair with ribbons. This intimate familial history is expressed through Caribbean grasses, South Asian textiles, and a pendant – possibly representing a classical Greek goddess like Demeter – weaving together diverse cultural symbols.

The exhibit, titled "She Walked in Reverse and Found Their Songs" (also the title of a central work from 2024), explores various mythologies and rituals. In she walked in reverse, viewers encounter a representation of the Roman goddess Diana. This depiction draws inspiration from French Rococo artist Francois Boucher's Le Repos des Nymphes au retour de la chasse, dit Le Retour de Chasse de Diane, 1745. 

Mattei's Diana is a striking figure: a vibrant, brown-skinned goddess crowned with a halo of embroidery floss. This reimagining represents intercultural identity and the creation of "a new mythology, a joyful way of thinking.” The exhibit's title, "She Walked in Reverse and Found Their Songs," suggests a dialogue between past and future, a theme that Mattei explores in her two-dimensional works. As Mattei explains, “Diana is a historic, mythological narrative. I shift the narrative to who is worshipping her, who is looking at her... By combining these glorious historical mythological figures of folklore, we can take what is good from the past and imagine what these new heroines look like." Mattei aims to capture this possibility within her two-dimensional work, envisioning heroines who occupy spaces of potential.

Suchitra identifies her work as being within the realm of magical realism, folklore, and mythology. Her installation memory palace "reveals what happens inside supposedly impenetrable" places. Suchitra states that she is "addicted to time consuming processes," and the scale of memory palace (2024)  required four assistants in its production, which "was a meditative, daily practice." The installation is a transformative space that provides an immersive spatial environment.

Suchitra embraces the challenge of working with different scales across various media. The labor-intensive nature of the show involved a processual practice, without a predetermined "bigger picture" in mind. The experience evokes themes of labor and colonization, sparking discussions about the treatment of indentured labor in comparison to historical slavery in South American history. Diaz highlighted that Guyana's English as its lingua franca, unique in South America, underscores the trauma of colonization. While Suchitra's grandparents spoke Hindi and her parents spoke it sporadically, Suchitra studied it but primarily communicates in English.

Diaz noted that all the works created for SAM were a labor of love meant for this one exhibition. The show at SAM was collectively and intentionally created to tell a large, complete story for the Pacific Northwest. Suchitra had to adjust her stamina to scale with the works.

Jose Diaz notes that Mattei’s works represent specifically her roots in South Asian and South America, purposefully inclusively towards her ancestral memory and maternal lineage. The artist acknowledges “For many years, I wasn’t including these [skills]”, she wanted to reinvent her practice to tell the “the stories, the materials that felt authentic" In Mattei's words: "These materials allowed me to physically expand the exploration, and have a very magical feel in this exhibit."

Additionally, The Seattle Asian Art Museum is hosting a screening of Mattei's film Anuja on May 10, which was in collaboration with her husband Adam J. Graves; the driving force behind the academy award nominated short film. Anjua is about two sisters faced with a choice that connects the garment industry, continents, and the South Asian experience. This film bridges Mattei's visual art and her filmmaking storytelling. Find a link to RSVP here.

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