WASHINGTON — People like to send fabrics to artist Suchitra Mattai. Her mother, who lives in Edison, New Jersey, 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.
Some of Mattai’s loved ones send their own garments, too, made with precious threads and delicate materials. Her mother never holds back. For “Silent Retreat” (2023), Mattai incorporated one of her mother’s saris — an exquisite piece of fabric with intricate patterns — into a dazzling embroidered tapestry.
“My mom is completely detached from material things,” said Mattai, 51, describing Subhadra Mattai as someone who thrives in monthslong meditation retreats. For her part, Suchitra Mattai is a material person. Her ancestors were indentured laborers who left Uttar Pradesh in India to work on sugar plantations in Guyana, on the northern coast of South America, and Mattai weaves her family stories into maximalist pieces that read like paintings.
In “Silent Retreat” and other works, she used embroidery floss to color in the figures in the found tapestries that served as the base of her works. She describes this process of introducing people of color to pastoral European scenes as “brown reclamation.” “Myth From Matter,” Mattai’s solo exhibition a.
