October 17, 2025, through May 2027
Suchitra Mattai (Guyanese, b. 1973)
to leave a trace, 2024. Vintage saris, fabric, seagrass, 20 ft. long panels: grass: 59 x 60 in. saris and fabric: 80 x 59 in. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles.
On May 5, 1883, two ships left India with indentured laborers and headed to the shores of Guyana, a British colony on the east coast of South America. Over an 80-year period, from 1883–1917, the British Empire transported 250,000 Indian men, women, and children to work on Guyana’s sugar plantations. Sugar, especially crops from Guyana, produced trade riches for the Crown and received the nickname “White Gold.” The sugar trade resulted in generations of Indian migrants settling new homes in the Caribbean. Despite adverse treatment and challenging living conditions, they established cultural traditions in their new tropical environment. Suchitra Mattai’s artwork to leave a trace evokes the complex history of migration that transformed the lives of her family and thousands of others.
Ships and the sea appear in several of Mattai’s artworks as explorations of self and community. She uses materials familiar to her—such as vintage saris, bindis and beading, and Hindu relics—to reclaim history and give prominence to voices silenced or ignored throughout time. The artist’s monumental installation to leave a trace (2024) re-envisions the Trans-Atlantic journey from India to Guyana. Mattai represents the ship’s hull with an elongated post wrapped in braided gold rope. The sails, comprised of vibrant saris and seagrass, serve as stand-ins for the female figure and land. Each sari sail features a dark and light side, a nod to the dual identities inherent to the Indo-Caribbean population, especially women. Mattai protects the ship with mastheads of the Roman goddess Diana and the Hindu deity Devi to protect and provide safe passage for the travelers.
About the Artist
Born in 1973 in Georgetown, Guyana, Mattai has lived across continents yet retains close ties to the South Asian communities in the Caribbean and US. The artist earned her MFA in painting and drawing, as well as an MA in South Asian art from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In addition to the Tampa Museum of Art, Mattai has received solo exhibitions at the ICA San Francisco; Seattle Art Museum; Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, New York; Joselyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska; and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. In 2025, Mattai’s art was selected for the Saõ Paulo Biennial exhibition entitled Not All Travellers Walk Roads. Suchitra Mattai lives and works in Los Angeles, California