In this Episode of Art is Awesome, Host Emily Wilson spends time with Los Angeles based artist Suchitra Mattai.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.
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.
About Artist Suchitra Mattai:
Suchitra is a multi-disciplinary Guyanese American artist of South Asian descent. She received an MFA in painting and drawing and an MA in South Asian art from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Recent projects include group exhibitions at the MCA Chicago, Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the MCA Denver, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center and the Sharjah Biennial 14 and solo exhibitions at the Boise Museum of Art , Roberts Projects, and Kavi Gupta Gallery. Upcoming projects include solo exhibitions at the ICA San Francisco (San Francisco), the Tampa Museum of Art (Tampa, FL) , the National Museum for Women in the Arts (Washington, DC) and Socrates Sculpture Park (NYC, NY). Her works are represented in collections which include Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, the Nasher Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Tampa Museum of Art, the Joselyn Museum, the Tia Collection, the Perez Collection, the Shah Garg collection, and the University of Michigan Museum of Art.
Visit Suchitra's Website: SuchitraMattaiArt.com
Follow on Instagram: @SuchitraMattaiStudio
For more about her exhibit, "She Walked In Reverse And Found Their Songs" at the ICA San Francisco, CLICK HERE.
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About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:
Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.
Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil
Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast
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CREDITS:
Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.
Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.
For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com
2024-0715 - AIA - EP030 - Suchitra Mattai
Host Emily Wilson: [00:00:00] Art is Awesome can now be heard on KSFP 102. 5 FM every Friday at 9 a. m. and 7 p. m. Please follow the show and rate us wherever you get your podcast media. If you like what you hear from today's artist, you can find links and information about them in our show notes.
Artist Suchitra Mattai: Ultimately, I want to tell the stories of people whose stories haven't been heard. And In a way, the first step is telling the stories of my own ancestors. They were indentured laborers. They were nomads. They traveled in a forcible way. And then I thought, well, how do I tell these stories?
Host Emily Wilson: That's multidisciplinary artist, Suchitra Muttai, on this week's episode of Art Awesome.
I'm your host, Emily Wilson. I'm a writer in San Francisco, often covering the arts, and I've been meeting [00:01:00] such great people that I created this bi weekly podcast to highlight their work.
Suchitra Mattai was born in Guyana and immigrated with her family to Canada when she was young. She got her BA in statistics at Rutgers University. She then went on to earn an M. A. in South Asian Art and an M. F. A. in Painting and Drawing, both from the University of Pennsylvania. A lot of Suchitra's work explores memory, labor, migration, and colonization.
It's been shown at the MCA Chicago, Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, The Art Gallery of Ontario and the Boise Museum of Art, among others. Suchitra has shows coming up at the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D. C. and the Socrates Sculpture Park in New York City. [00:02:00]Currently, Suchitra has a solo exhibit, she walked in reverse and found their songs at the ICA San Francisco. We met there and she showed me the exhibit and told me how her ancestors were brought from India to Guyana, where she was born at the center of the exhibit. There's a house made of used saris floating off the ground. It's a re imagining of Suchitra's grandparents house in Guyana.
Ali Gass, the director of the ICA, encouraged Suchitra to do something that would push her art in a new direction. Suchitra had been thinking about making this house for years.
Artist Suchitra Mattai: I've been dreaming about it for quite some time. I didn't know what form it would take, but I knew that I wanted to create this, like, ode to my grandparents’ house.
Host Emily Wilson: The house, and other pieces in the show, explore [00:03:00] personal history.
Artist Suchitra Mattai: My earliest memories are in that house, and there's something about capturing those stories and memories that helps define one's self, and so I think in making it, or a version of it, is a way to find something about one's self.
Host Emily Wilson: I asked Suchitra how she decided on the form the house took.
Artist Suchitra Mattai: I've been working with the saris and this process of weaving, quote unquote, and it seemed that making it in a textile and specifically the saris was a wonderful way of translating that ephemeral quality and that kind of magical, mystical emotion that I wanted to convey.
Host Emily Wilson: In 2019, Suchitra began using saris for some work she did in the United Arab Emirates.
Artist Suchitra Mattai: It started with my project for the Sharjah Biennial, and I wanted to create, rather, [00:04:00] a kind of monument, um, to the South Asian people. population there and using saris made sense to me because so many South Asian women wear them, but I also grew up wearing saris for occasions, you know, weddings and, and all sorts of fun rituals.
And so using them felt natural, and I often incorporate my mom's saris, her friend's saris, my former saris into the works themselves, but they felt like a way of bringing these bodies together. These women's bodies and ultimately their souls.
It was a very humble place, but it's all about family. Like I think part of it is seeing photos as we all do and reconstructing spaces and places through the photos, but they're all with family. And for whatever reason, I think it was the most beautiful spot, but all [00:05:00] of our family photos, like especially weddings and, uh, when everyone's dressed up, are all taken from a very particular angle in front of that house.And so when I, you know, when I think about the past and my relatives, that house becomes the backdrop, both the exterior and the interior.
Host Emily Wilson: The house hangs in the middle of the gallery. The houses in Guyana are on stilts, so it's floating off the ground. Nearby in the corner is a work called Memory Palace. It has furniture, large balls made of bright material and video.
Artist Suchitra Mattai: So when I made the exterior of the house, I wanted it to be impenetrable. I wanted it to be more of a repository. Of memories, and when I thought about this second installation memory palace, I wanted it to be the domestic space that then became inhabited, um, with these strange sculptures [00:06:00] and creatures. And the reason is because the space of memory is ephemeral. It's always changing. It's transformative. And that interior space allows for all of this to happen. And so it's a space of fantasy.
Host Emily Wilson: The videos in the Memory Palace are one Suchitra made following the route of her ancestors’ forced migration to South America.
Artist Suchitra Mattai: The video is of the Atlantic Ocean, which I took on this journey that I was able to do on a ship where I retraced my ancestors’ pasts and paths from India to northern South America, the north east coast of South America, where Guyana is. And so they were indentured laborers, and they were taken by the British from the British It's largest colony, India, to work sugar on sugar plantations in Guyana. And that path around the [00:07:00] Indian Ocean and across the Atlantic is something that I was able to actually take.
Host Emily Wilson: The videos make the installation feel like a room in the house, Suchitra says.
Artist Suchitra Mattai: The openings for the video are actually, um, windows. Just what, you know, windows in a house, but they're windows that only permit you to see this very abstract ocean scape.
And so in a way it collapses space, even though there's, you know, continuous horizon. One of the other works in the show really deals with the horizon line. And so the video brings it back. It kind of bookends the show with this sense of the horizon.
Host Emily Wilson: Suchitra's art combines her different cultures.
Artist Suchitra Mattai: So much of the work in the exhibition incorporate found objects. And so whether it's found textiles that have been reworked and reclaimed or found furniture, there's a kind of through line with [00:08:00] found object. I work very intuitively and I combine very disparate kind of objects together because it's a way. To reconcile, I guess, all these multiple sort of cultural spheres that I exist within.
And so, you know, I might combine beading with Bindi's. You know, and I call it Bindiing, so it's, you know, it's just another process that I've come up with in another material. And so you'll, you'll find that materials tell the stories. Uh, the show begins with the guide, which is a portal. It actually incorporates both tapestry and what I think is a doorway from an Indian palace.
It leads you into the exhibition where you'll find stories of women and goddesses that are empowered.
Host Emily Wilson: Suchitra heard about memory palaces in grad school. It's a technique orators [00:09:00] used to remember speeches. The palace is an imaginary location in your mind. And you mentally place images there. As an immigrant, a lot of what you have is memories, Suchitra says, and reclaiming these memories helps you find your place in the world.
Artist Suchitra Mattai: You know, ultimately, I want to tell the stories of people whose stories haven't been heard. And, you know, in a way, the first step is telling the stories of my own ancestors. They were indentured laborers, they were nomads, they traveled in a forcible way. And then I thought, well, how do I tell these stories?
You know, we have oral histories, we don't have written histories, we have photographs, we have books, we have, you know, all of, all of these sort of bits and pieces that are fragmented. So that's what feeds the memories, right?
Host Emily Wilson: Suchitra’s path has been varied, including studying statistics. She uses that knowledge in her work.
Artist Suchitra Mattai: I think math shows up in [00:10:00] different ways in my work and how I problem solve and the kind of challenges I'm always looking forward to in my practice. But I, I worked in New York for various nonprofit organizations like Pratt Institute so I could take classes post bac. And then I went to grad school for South Asian art history.
And that was a way again of learning about my past. It was one way, but it was a way that didn't really fit. I'd always wanted to be an artist. And it was a matter of just having the courage to do it. And so I went to grad school and then there's sort of a space in between. I was very sick, but I also raised my children during that time.
Host Emily Wilson: When she got better, she decided to go for the career she wanted.
Artist Suchitra Mattai: I was sick. And I think when you recover from illness, you realize that every day is very precious and I know it's a cliche, but it's so true. And I think, you know, I was teaching as well. I didn't mention that I was, I was adjuncting, [00:11:00] you know, at college.And I, I basically decided that every day would be used for art making
Host Emily Wilson: That transformed. everything for her.
Artist Suchitra Mattai:. It was so liberating. It's changed my life and how I interact with the world. And it's been a, you know, not just like a wonderful, like process of growing, but it's been cathartic and, and very much about healing.
Host Emily Wilson: ICA director Ali Gass curated the show.
Artist Suchitra Mattai: I'm elated to see it all together in the way that Ali's curated it. I think that, When you're working on a such a scale, as I was saying, like, you don't know if it's all going to work, right? I mean, like, someone is fabricating my, the under, you know, armature of [00:12:00] the house and, uh, we're making the tapestries, like, Are they all going to fit?Is it going to float in the way that I want? They're all these unknowns and things that are beyond your control. And so right now I'm sitting, seeing the show as its whole for the first time and seeing all the parts feed into this idea, uh, of the memory palace and about the, the way memory functions, uh, in our creation of self.And I'm just so, you know, I'm so excited, so excited to see it all.
Host Emily Wilson: Suchitra says that really, everything she does is a collage.
Artist Suchitra Mattai: I've always just been excited about putting things that are very disparate together and making sense of them. And I really think it's just about living in different places and growing up in these different cultures and making sense of them all.
And so when I use found materials, and when I. try to reconcile them in a particular composition or [00:13:00] sculpture. That's a way that, uh, a way of working, like, you know, if you think of it as mixed media, that is super powerful. It requires a kind of problem solving, which I think goes back in a way to the math. Yeah. I just, I love to problem solve.
Host Emily Wilson: This is the part of the show where I asked the guest the same three questions starting with when did you know you were an artist and what is some work that's made an impact on you? I changed the last question a little bit. About creatively inspiring places in the Bay Area. Like Alison Saar, the guest on the last episode, Suchitra, lives in Los Angeles, so I asked her what place there is most creatively inspiring for her.
Artist Suchitra Mattai: I think I knew I was an artist when I was about seven, six, or seven. I just realized. that whenever I [00:14:00] had free time, when I wasn't at school, when I wasn't, you know, doing other things that all I did was draw, that's all I did, paint and draw.
I think many, many years ago, I saw Julie Mehretu's work, um, this was during grad school. And I remember being blown away by the layering. and the sort of cultural content and the beauty of that work. Um, that, that work has always stuck with me and Kara Walker's work as well. Of course. Yeah.
Oh my goodness. LA is full of creative and inspiring places, but I, I really do love The Broad. And I think part of it, part of it is that [00:15:00] collection basically has epic examples of amazing artists. So yeah, that's one of my favorite places.
Host Emily Wilson: Thank you to our guest Suchitra Mattai. Her show, she walked in reverse, and found their songs is at the ICA San Francisco through September 15th. The ICA is free. And thank you for listening to Art is Awesome. Please follow the show and join us next time when we talk to Alma Landeta. Alma is an artist in residence at the Palo Alto Art Center and their work is part of a show, Resonantly Me, at the Bakersfield Museum of Art.[00:16:00]
Art is Awesome is a bi weekly podcast coming out every other Tuesday. It's created and hosted by me, Emily Wilson. It is produced and edited by Charlene Goto of Goto Productions. It's carried on KSFP LP 102. 5 FM, San Francisco on Fridays at 9 a. m. and 7 p. m. Our theme music is provided by Kevin MacLeod with Incompetech Music.
Be sure and follow us on Instagram at ArtisAwesomePodcast or visit our website. Till next [00:17:00]time.