Annu Palakunnathu Matthew

Annu Palakunnathu Matthew’s photographic work addresses the political, social, and transformative issues stemming from her own experience of living between three cultures. These cultural overlays and shifts use a framework of visual juxtaposition and the construction of parallel realities, identities, and histories.

From her early work, Memories of India, to her video project, The Unremembered, Matthew explores the connection between past and present. Memories of India consists of jewel-like images which are both nostalgic yet familiar. Shot with a plastic Holga camera, the series is an ongoing tribute to memories of her childhood in India. In Re-Generations, Matthew uses photos taken from the family albums of friends, relatives, and acquaintances. The video melding of these images from past to present fuse the faces of the past with the present—movingly revealing the underlying connection between the two.

Matthew’s work has been exhibited internationally, most notably at The Cincinnati Art Museum (Cincinnati), Former Glory at the RISD Museum (Providence), The Smithsonian (Washington D.C.), NIU Art Museum (New York), Portland Museum of Art (Portland), Sharjah Art Museum (UAE), The Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Newark Art Museum; 2009 Guangzhou Biennial of Photography, China; 2006 Noorderlicht Photofestival, Netherlands; and the 2005 Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal Photo Biennale in Canada.

In 2007, Matthew was the first of three artists to be awarded the MacColl Johnson Fellowship in Visual Arts. She has also received the John Gutmann Fellowship, the Rhode Island State Council of the Arts Fellowship, and the American Institute of Indian Studies Creative Arts Fellowship. She was an artist-in-residence at the Yaddo and MacDowell Colonies. Her work can be found in the collections of the George Eastman House, Fogg Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Center for Creative Photography; Daimler Art Collection; and the RISD Museum among others. Her work has been featured in BLINK(Phaidon) and Self-Portraits (Susan Bright.)

Annu Palakunnathu Matthew is Professor of Art (Photography) at the University of Rhode Island.

ANNU PALAKUNNATHU MATTHEW

b. 1964, India

Annu Palakunnathu Matthew’s photo-based installation work is a striking blend of still and moving imagery. Her larger work draws on archival photographs as a source of inspiration to re-examine neglected historical narratives. Matthew often uses archival imagery and family photographs as a starting point as they are familiar to a viewer, which allows the work to be more accessible. The preliminary research along with the images enables her to interpret the “known” history in order to give the viewer the opportunity to question established narratives and consider parallel realities, identities, and histories. Matthew makes use of the ever-expanding digital toolbox to make her work increasingly more accessible.

Matthew's recent solo exhibitions include the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada, Nuit Blanche Toronto, and sepiaEYE, NYC. Matthew has also exhibited her work at the RISD Museum, MFA Boston, MFA Houston, Victoria & Albert Museum (London), 2018 Kochi-Muziris Biennale, 2018 Fotofest Biennial as well as at the Smithsonian.

Grants and fellowships that have supported her work include a MacColl Johnson, John Guttman, two Fulbright Fellowships and grants from the Rhode Island State Council of the Arts. In addition, she has been an artist in residence at Yaddo and MacDowell.

As Holland Cotter of the New York Times wrote about her 2016 solo exhibition at sepiaEYE in New York “…The mostly album-size photographs in this compact but far-ranging gallery survey are about the intensities and confusions of a cultural mixing that makes the artist, psychologically, both a global citizen and an outsider, at home and in transit, wherever she is. And it’s about photography as document and fiction: souvenir, re-enactment and imaginative projection. A beautiful show that could too easily slip away.”

Annu Palakunnathu Matthew is Professor of Art at the University of Rhode Island. She was also the 2014-19 Director of the Center for the Humanities and the 2015-17 Silvia Chandley Professor in Peace Studies and Non-Violence.

www.annumatthew.com

ANNU PALAKUNNATHU MATTHEW

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