By Elin Spring
When I look at art, I search for a novel way of seeing, a perspective that enlightens and may even change my perception of the world. Artists who feel alien to a culture are inherently poised to offer such alternate viewpoints. In 1958, Swiss-born Robert Frank held up a revelatory mirror in his classic, The Americans. In ReVision, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew draws upon her British, Indian and American roots to present seven distinctive and illuminating projects arising from her self-described “perch between cultures.” Her sweeping, poignant, and brilliantly executed mid-career retrospective will be on view at the Newport Art Museum in Rhode Island through January 9th, 2022.
Annu Palakunnathu Matthew with part of her installation, The Unremembered: The Stories of the Indian soldiers who fought in World War II, 2021, at the Newport Art Museum in Rhode Island. Photo by Elin Spring.
“Cauvery River” 1999, silver gelatin print from the series Memories of India by Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, courtesy of the artist and sepiaEYE, NYC.
Beginning in 1996 with Memories of India, Matthew has used photography as a springboard for projects that have become progressively more integrated with other media. In a striking parallel, she utilizes a toolbox that continues to expand the definition of photography beyond a two-dimensional print to convey ever widening experiences and inquiries stemming from her emigration from England to India at age 11 and then to the US in her early twenties. The narrative arc of her projects takes on deeper sociopolitical layers as she reconsiders cultural histories through storytelling, from expressing feelings of “otherness” in An Indian from India to humanizing complex international political movements in The Unremembered. Through her focus on individuals, Matthew not only advances our understanding and appreciation, but invites our empathy.
“Hampi” 2003, silver gelatin print from the series Memories of India by Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, courtesy of the artist and sepiaEye, NYC.
Initially inspired by the idea of Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment,” Matthew periodically returns to the streets with an inauspicious Holga camera in her series Memories of India. This toy film camera famously creates vignettes and other capricious light effects that are ideally suited for expressing a dreamlike state, allowing Matthew to embrace instinct over technical manipulations. A sense of timelessness is further enhanced by her use of black and white film. With dynamic framing that averts the specificity of individual faces, Matthew peers back at the dusky sensuality of her childhood memories in moody, intimate prints.
“Drying Dupatta” 1997, silver gelatin print from the series Memories of India by Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, courtesy of the artist and sepiaEye, NYC.
“War Paint” 2001, Black Bear Jr. (Arapahoe), ca.1900. Photographer F. A. Rinehart. Original photograph courtesy of Western History/ Genealogy Department, Denver Public Library, Denver, CO. From the series An Indian from India, by Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, courtesy of the artist and sepiaEYE, NYC.
Following countless explanations upon moving to the United States, Matthew created a humorous and biting series of diptychs, An Indian from India. She is particularly sensitive to the culture of colonization, an unfortunate bond she shares with indigenous American Indians. Seizing upon the idea of revisiting a particularly stinging aspect of colonization, she paired acquired, antique wet-plate collodion photographs of American Indians with digitally constructed mirror-image self-portraits. Her visual puns are an inventive mockery of the gross caricatures, stereotyping and exoticizing that colonizers used in branding Native Americans and Indians.
TOP LEFT: “Quanah Parker (Indian)”, 2003, Archival digital print. Comanche Chief Quanah Parker, ca. 1890. Photographer C.M. Bell. Original photograph courtesy University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, PA.
BOTTOM LEFT: “Quanah Parker (Western)”, 2003, Archival digital print. Quanah Parker (Comanche Chief), ca. 1890s. Photographer C.M. Bell. Original; photograph courtesy of U. of PA Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, Phila, PA.
TOP RIGHT: “Tom and Annu Before” 2001, Archival digital print. Tom Torlino, Navajo, before, ca. before 1882. Photographer J.N. Choate. Original photograph courtesy of Western History/ Genealogy Dept., Denver Public Library, Denver, CO.
BOTTOM RIGHT: “Tom and Annu After” 2001, Archival digital print. Tom Torlino, Navajo, after, ca. after 1885. Photographer J.N. Choate. Original photograph courtesy of Western History/ Genealogy Dept., Denver Public Library, Denver CO.
All from the series An Indian from India by Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, courtesy of the artist and sepiaEYE, NYC. Installation view by Elin Spring.
“Sneha” 2010, Still from framed digital photo animation on iPad, from the series Re-Generations by Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, courtesy of the artist and sepiaEYE, NYC.
In several series, Matthew has brought the memories of Indian WWII soldiers and their families into focus. These installations shine a light on the human plights of war and expand an artillery of photographic techniques begun in Re-Generations, a mesmerizing series of revolving, intergenerational studio portraits that convey the fluidity of remembering and forgetting.
Installation view of Open Wound – Stories of Partition by Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, courtesy of the artist and sepiaEYE, NYC. Photo by Elin Spring.
Following WWII, a complex convergence of events forced the British to relinquish their political rule over India. Their vague and contested 1947 “Radcliffe Line” partitioned the vast subcontinent into India, West Pakistan (later Pakistan), and East Pakistan (later Bangladesh). Political and religious factions clashed, causing a sudden forced migration and the massacre of an astonishing one million people in just three months. Where were the stories surrounding this national trauma, Matthew wondered, following a visit to Holocaust Museum in Israel? In her project Open Wound-Stories of Partition, Matthew collected uncannily similar personal stories and pictures from Indian and Pakistani children of the partition and loaded them onto a pair of iPads imbedded in two carved out 1947 encyclopedias. Before them, a video loop of birds flocking and swooping around the tower of a sanctuary in Delhi appear like searching souls. Although her own migrations were unforced, Matthew’s intimate retelling of this historic hollowing out of entire cultures during displacement is a stirring call to compassion.
Photograph while recording The Unremembered: Indian Soldiers of World War II – The Italian Campaign, 2018, by Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, courtesy of the artist and sepiaEYE, NYC.
To help mark the 75th anniversary of WWII, Matthew was commissioned to create a multimedia piece commemorating the participation of 2.5 million unheralded Indian soldiers who took up arms with their British colonizers during the war. The installation presented at the 2018 Kochi-Muziris Biennale, the largest international contemporary art festival in Asia, is recreated in The Unremembered: Indian Soldiers of World War II – The Italian Campaign. Indians chose to fight alongside the British for a variety of reasons but many in India vehemently resented British colonial rule. Consequently, those who fought and the eighty-seven thousand who died remained largely unacknowledged. Matthew’s haunting video projections of WWII newsreels onto the Italian gravesites of those who helped win the Battle of Monte Cassino were recorded at dawn and dusk in an animation that seems to breathe life back into the unsung soldiers. A mirror on the floor in front of the video presentation serves as a reflecting pool, imbuing the installation with aching solemnity and reverence.
Installation close-up of 3-D etched crystals of family photos combined with edited archival footage projected on fabric with audio from The Unremembered: The Stories of the Indian soldiers who fought in World War II. 2021, by Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, courtesy of the artist and sepiaEYE, NYC. Photo by Elin Spring.
In a more recent iteration of The Unremembered: Indian Soldiers of World War II, Matthew creates a transporting installation with ethereal 3-D crystal photo memorials. Stories she collects from the families of volunteer soldiers who fought in a variety of WWII theatres provide audio narrations, while WWII video footage is projected through the crystals onto sheer, undulating fabric used to make Indian dhoti. Matthew’s crystalized images sparkle and glow, adopting an enhanced dimensionality as they waver, ghostlike, between being there and not being there. We are immersed in reminiscences of life’s fragility, brevity and heroism.
Installation view of Silhouettes, scrolling names projected on two soldiers, noting some of the 87,000 Indian fighters who died in WWII, by Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, courtesy of the artist and sepiaEYE, NYC. Photo by Elin Spring.
Ordinarily, when I leave an exhibit addressing the nihilism of conflict and suffering, I feel an oppressive helplessness. Not here. In ReVision, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew has transformed epic, traumatic events into intimate portraits that invite us to relate to history in a new way. Her inventive artistry not only opens our imaginations, but our hearts, with humanizing narratives that offer sparks of hope in stories of survival. The multi-sensory, encompassing ambience Matthew creates can only be truly conveyed in person, where you will see how ReVision affirms the power of empathy.
Feature Image: Still from Unremembered: The Indian soldiers who fought in the Italian Campaign of World War II, 2018. Rear projected video with audio and reflection pool by Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, courtesy of the artist and sepiaEYE, NYC.
For more information about the ReVision exhibit, go to: https://newportartmuseum.org/exhibitions/revision/
Also at Newport Art Museum, Hair Stories is a splendid multimedia exhibit exploring cultural, religious and societal ideas intertwined with hair, featuring photographers Tara Bogart , María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Sean M. Johnson, Vivian Keulards, Zanele Muholi, Lorna Simpson and DM Witman among others. On view through October 31st, 2021.
For more information about Hair Stories, go to: https://newportartmuseum.org/exhibitions/hair-stories/
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