Homeland, Heartland, Suchitra Mattai

Photopolymer plate, screen print, gouache, embroidery floss on Canson archival paper, 2APs Paper size: 15 x 22 in. Paper type: Canson Edition Collaborating Printer: Jennifer Ghormley. Signed by the artist. 2020.

Limited edition of 20.

Suchitra Mattai’s work weaves materials from her own Indo-Caribbean family together with objects from other parts of the world and from other time periods and probes questions of displacement and migration resulting from European colonization. Focusing on this period is both a means of tracing her family’s history in Guyana and India and of fostering discussion around contemporary issues surrounding labor and gender. Mattai’s work was seen in State of the Art 2020 at the Momentary and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art from February to August 2020.

For this limited edition print, Mattai says, “I wanted to create a work that considered the meaning of "home" and spoke of the connections between memory, family, and history. A nineteenth-century print of the landscape of Guyana (my country of birth) is the focal point. Using several mixed-media and printmaking processes, such as drawing, painting and embroidery, screen printing, etc., I wanted to convey the complexity of "home" in the context of migration. The materials were designed to simultaneously connect the domestic (embroidery), cultural (the Indian organic central drawing), and physical (landscape print).”