Suchitra Mattai: The Fall

Born in Guyana, Suchitra Mattai descends from Indian indentured servants who Britain forcibly relocated to the Caribbean in the nineteenth century. Using colorful South Asian saris, Mattai explores stories of migration and the search for identity that diasporic communities often experience. Her site-specific installation in the Riley CAP Gallery takes inspiration from Guyana’s Kaieteur Falls, one of the largest single-drop waterfalls in the world. The exhibition features hundreds of braided saris that encircle a pool of glass shards Mattai gathered following a break-in at her former studio. Mattai believes that her repurposed materials hold mysteries tied to their origins and cultural applications. The broken glass—the product of a painful personal experience—serves as a metaphor for the collective trauma of Mattai’s ancestors and casts the gallery space as a site of healing, reclamation, and future imagining.

Pictured: Suchitra Mattai (Indo-Caribbean, born Guyana, 1973), The Fall, 2025, worn saris, broken glass from an attempted studio break-in, installation dimensions variable, Courtesy the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, Photo by Paul Salveson.