Suchitra Mattai: with abundance we meet

with abundance we meet is an installation made of ‘fruit’ (phala in Hindi) sculptures by the artist Suchitra Mattai that are ripe with possibilities, conjuring wombs and fertility spirits. The phala are made with braided and woven vintage saris and are a nod to the artist’s South Asian ancestry and will hang in the museum’s rotunda. These ‘migrant bodies’ seems to simultaneously rise and fall, emerge and disappear. The saris are from all over the world, from India, the Caribbean (Guyana, specifically), and the United States, and are sometimes gifted to the artist by friends and family. When braided and woven in this scale, the sculptures become monuments to women. They also allude to domestic labor as they are made of ‘everyday’ saris (not the ‘fancy’ ones worn for ritual celebrations and other formal occasions). The work honors craft-based processes historically associated with women and the domestic, such as early American braided rug-making. With every strip of fabric, the artist connects women of the South Asian diaspora and beyond.