The Women's Work Issue Women's Work. Pen and Brush. 2019 | Page 32

Image from previous page:
pen + brush x of note
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Suchitra Mattai
Shadow Land, 2019
gouache, watercolor, oil, acrylic,
vintage needlepoint, Hindu comic
30 x 40. Courtesy of the artist and
K Contemporary.
Suchitra Mattai, Mala, 2018. Found fiber, crocheted fiber, video, 60 x 96 inches. Courtesy of the artist
and K Contemporary.
WELL BEFORE COMPUTERS, weaving
looms were one of the first machines to be
programmed. 1 And it was a woman—the 19 th
century mathematician Ada Lovelace—who
saw the connection between Joseph Marie
Jacquard’s programmed loom, which used
punch cards to determine which of the
textile’s warp threads should be lifted up
and when, and the potential for algorithmic
calculations. Lovelace wrote the first
computer program for an invention Charles
Babbage conceived in 1834. She explained in a
letter to him: “The Analytical Engine weaves
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algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard-loom
weaves flowers and leaves.” 2 That it was a
woman from the Victorian era who saw this
connection speaks to the fact that many
trades seen traditionally as the purview of
men have long been shaped by women.
Suchitra Mattai illuminates women’s work
through intermedia projects that reflect both
tradition and technological rifts and shifts.
Found and readymade objects, from vintage
saris to cut-up magazines, populate Mattai’s
oeuvre. The artist uses woven textiles, mass-
Women’s Work
Suchitra Mattai, The Great Escape, 2019, Vintage National Geographic Magazines, Hindu
comics, 12 x 9 inches. Courtesy of the artist and K Contemporary.
produced objects, and video as materials to
create invented landscapes—often inhabited
with women protagonists (or traces of them)—
that are reflective of diasporic histories
and inter-generational memories. The
Guyanese-born Mattai learned the processes
around creating these works from her Indian
mother and grandmother, highlighting the
importance of maintaining diasporic cultural
knowledges.
Mattai shapes her landscapes with circulating
cultural traditions that span multiple
continents, including India, the Americas,
and Europe. Traditionally, landscape scenes
have been woven into tapestries and prints;
Mattai in turn adopts cloth to create abstract
topographical landscapes. She contrasts mass
production through prints and factory woven-
materials with the handmade processes
of assemblage, collage, and textile craft
techniques.
Frames are a recurring motif in Mattai’s
work. In The Sweeter Side (2019) (page 12),
supple vintage saris are stretched and pulled