she walked in reverse and found their songs
Suchitra Mattai at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco
June 5–September 15, 2024
Suchitra Mattai was born in Georgetown, Guyana, and immigrated to Canada as a young child. The history of her ancestors—brought from India to work as indentured laborers in Guyana—deeply influences her practice. Using techniques passed down through generations, she weaves materials marked by the past into a collective story of migration and gendered labor. In this exhibition Mattai turns inward, examining the power of memory in the creation of her own stories: sometimes factual, sometimes fantastical, with divergent pieces collapsing and combining into something new.
At the center of the exhibition, Mattai reimagines her grandparents’ home in Guyana, the core of her migration story. Elsewhere, the imagined interior of that home spills into the gallery, where sculptures and characters help guide us along a memory journey. The title of the exhibition, she walked in reverse and found their songs, points to the ways in which peering back can help us find our place in the world. But it also points to slippages between past and present, reminding us that memory is subjective and that histories can—and should—be rewritten. Mattai invites us to create space for ourselves where there was none before, engage legacies of the past while rupturing with tradition, and mobilize memory toward new futures.
More exhibition info can be found online here.
Image: Installation view of Suchitra Mattai: she walked in reverse and found their songs. Photo: Nicholas Lea Bruno
