Resonant Presence: Materiality and Memory in the Work of Suchitra Mattai

Abstract

Memories can be fractured, incomplete, or unreliable, but materiality—especially for artist Suchitra Mattai—often embodies stability. As Joanna Sofaer notes, “Materiality conveys meaning. It provides the means by which social relations are visualized, for it is through materiality that we articulate meaning and thus it is the frame through which people communicate identities.” 1 Mattai’s use of specific materials denotes certain relationships, concepts, and questions, even while drawing from imprecise personal memories. She investigates her own family’s history—one that started decades prior as Indian indentured laborers in the British colony Guiana (now Guyana)—through these materials: personal tokens such as her mother’s and her aunt’s saris reference women of the South Asian diaspora, long decentered, but whose voices are here amplified; found needlepoint reclaims its status, eschewing the hierarchies imposed by colonial narratives dividing fine art from “women’s craft;” patterned paper and fabrics in the Tommy Bahama vein reference the ongoing exotification of the Caribbean by western consumerist culture; and sugar, the seemingly benign substance responsible for numerous acts of colonization, human enslavement, and the depletion of environmental resources, reminds the viewer of the ongoing ramifications of imperialism. This essay examines some of these materials—from “raw” to readymade objects and fabrics—as they intersect with memory in Mattai’s work, allowing us to, in Mattai’s words, “unravel and re-imagine historical narratives.”