Roberts Projects is pleased to present Fables, Guineps and the Sweetness of Unknowing, an exhibition of recent works on paper by Suchitra Mattai and her second solo presentation with the gallery. Created with Mattai’s singular approach to collage that blends different traditions of craft and cultural references, the exhibition adopts the literary form of the fable as its organizing structure to consider the enduring resonance of moral tales today.
Drawing on her Indo-Caribbean heritage, Mattai’s multidisciplinary practice employs techniques such as embroidery, needlepoint and beading to create vivid and formally complex works that straddle the line between two- and three-dimensionality. In previous bodies of work, Mattai has made use of representational aesthetics from Indian miniature paintings while also referencing the subject and form of European pastoral landscapes and portraiture. Building upon this creative exploration, these works on paper also examine the history of ornamentation by sourcing examples from 19th-century academic volumes that represent the colonial practice of essentializing diverse cultures and traditions through a set of pictorial conventions. The process of collage allows Mattai to remain connected to the specific histories embedded within her materials—including pieces of embroidery, book pages and fragments of sari tapestries—while also attempting to unify them with new and inventive compositions.
The use of narrative conventions has been central to Mattai’s process of reenvisioning her ancestral legacy, seeing them as repositories of historic meaning that can be reinterpreted and reimagined for the present. Mattai has looked to the history of fables—such as Aesop’s Fables and The Panchatantra in particular—for a conceptual framework to explore how society continues to make use of the character types and morally weighted meanings so often found in these stories. While still evoking the landscapes and architecture of European painting, Mattai’s collages interrupt those spaces and the formal implications they carry. This process of merging representational strategies which invokes a specific tradition of craft and artistry reflects Mattai’s broader project of considering how cultures have influenced one another through periods of migration.
Fables, Guineps and the Sweetness of Unknowing highlights the ongoing significance of collage for Mattai, with each work presenting a rich layering of ideas, textures and materials which convey the infinite curiosity at the heart of her practice. The form of collage itself and its consistent fragmentation of space into different zones of style and technique reflects the artist’s effort to create a visual language—a new ‘future space’—where the regional traditions of her ancestry can be preserved as they contribute to a contemporary consciousness and moral reckoning.
About the Artist
Suchitra Mattai (b. 1973, Georgetown, Guyana; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) is a multidisciplinary artist who explores how memory, myth and oral traditions can be harnessed to unravel colonial and patriarchal narratives. Drawing on her Indo-Caribbean roots, Mattai combines richly colored textiles, found objects, beads and more to create two- and three-dimensional works that offer a reimagined vision of the past that centers the perspectives of women and people of color, especially those from South Asia.
Recent solo exhibitions include Suchitra Mattai: The Fall, Joslyn Museum, Omaha, NE; Suchitra Mattai: with abundance we meet, Brooks Museum, Memphis, TN; Suchitra Mattai: she walked in reverse and found their songs, Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, travelled to Seattle Asian Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Suchitra Mattai: Myth from Matter, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; Suchitra Mattai: Bodies and Souls, Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL and Suchitra Mattai: We Are Nomads, We Are Dreamers, Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY. Select group exhibitions include the 36th São Paulo Biennial, 2025; Back To the Earth, Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA; Wired for Wonder, Kidspace Children’s Museum, Pasadena, CA; Allegedly the worst is behind us, Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA; The Appearance: Asian Diaspora in Latin America & the Caribbean, Americas Society, New York, NY; A Garden of Promise and Dissent, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora,1990s-Today, MCA Chicago, Chicago, IL, travelled to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA and Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA.
Mattai’s works are represented in the permanent collections of Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Denver Art Museum, CO; Kiran Nader Museum of Art, Delhi, India; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; Seattle Art Museum, WA; Tampa Museum of Art, FL; University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI and Wake Forest University, NC, among others.
For additional information regarding Suchitra Mattai, please visit robertsprojectsla.com or contact Mary Skarbek, Senior Director at mary@robertsprojectsla.com or 323-549-0223.
For press inquiries, please contact the team at ALMA.