The Women's Work Issue Women's Work. Pen and Brush. 2019 | Page 34

pen + brush x of note
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The artist uses woven textiles, mass-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.
tensely, texturally contrasting with the solid
silver metal frame that maintains the textile’s
forms. Yet, loose threads hang at the bottom
of the composition and softly contrast with
the frame to reveal the delicate unraveling
of the work itself. The undulating pattern in
The Sweeter Side is disrupted by white cloth
rope and an unbuckled belt; their purpose
of binding, holding up, and supporting is
rendered functionless. In Mala (2018), meaning
“garland” in Sanskrit, the frame contrasts with
its construction. Soft, found crocheted fiber
creates a curtained border for a video screen
that plays an image of a moving mountainous
landscape, intermixed with blurs and blocks of
blue, black, and white.
Suchitra Mattai, In Ernest, 2019, watercolor, gouache, pen and thread on book clipping on wood panel,
30 x 24 x 1.50 inches. Courtesy of the artist and K Contemporary.
war, and Neptune, the god of the sea, represent
the Venetian empire’s dominion over land
and water. 3 Veronese represents this strength
through hyper-masculinity, which Mattai
then visually and physically disrupts with a
silhouette of a calm, meditating, gender-fluid
figure that floats in front of Veronese’s chaotic
cityscape. In another of Mattai’s collages, the
same silhouetted form embodies Veronese’s
image and contrasts it with a green map of the
mountains and towns of central California.
Mattai weaves and pastes disparate spaces
and creates textual and textural adjacencies
to remind the viewer that women today,
much like Lovelace in the 19th century, are
continually creating, shaping, and activating
new terrains.
In one collage, Mattai includes fragments of
a painting depicting the fantastic, imaginary
cityscape of sixteenth-century Venice, a global
trading giant and center of luxury textile
manufacturing. The image comes from Paolo
Veronese’s Italian Mannerist work Mars and
Neptune (1575 - 78). Mars, the Roman god of
1 Sarah Laksow, “Before Computers, People Programmed Looms,” The Atlantic, 16 Sept. 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/
technology/archive/2014/09/before-computers-people-programmed-looms/380163/.
2 Ada Lovelace, quoted in Laksow, “Before Computers, People Programmed Looms.”
3 David Rosand, Myths of Venice: The Figuration of State, Chapel Hill, NC: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2007.
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Women’s Work