This mid-career survey of Annu Palakunnathu Matthew elucidates the progression of a conceptual, installation-driven artist who uses photography, collage, digital animation, parody, and ephemera to explore performative and deep-rooted personal elements of cultural identities. From her highly-publicized series “Indian from India” to the lesser-seen “Bollywood Satirized,” the book reveals within her work consistent themes of malleability, identity, and memory.

Informed by her perspective as a global citizen who has been a resident of three continents, the book’s sequence is its own journey through geographies and time, influenced by the irrefutable narratives of population displacement, and the imperfection of memories. Her photo-based installation work is a blend of still and moving imagery, often drawing on archives of professional portraiture and of personal photographs to elucidate similarities beneath assumed surface differences. 

Matthew investigates identities she exists within, and outside of, finding ways to inhabit others’ stories so that they are heard and seen. Probing the impact of America’s dual position as colony and colonizer, her work expands what is considered to be American history in the country she now calls home.

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