“Revision,” Annu Palakunnathu Matthew’s (CRF 2021) mid-career retrospective has opened at the Newport Art Museum. It will be on view from September 25, 2021 through January 9, 2022. The opening reception will be on Thursday, September 30, from 5-7 pm.
“For over twenty years, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew has been making photo-based works of art that deal with lesser known histories and immigration. Born in England, raised in India, and now living in the United States, Matthew draws on her personal experience and identity, and also collaborates to tell the stories of others from South Asia. These experiences and collaborations culminate in powerful and evocative works of art. Although she began her career as an accomplished still photographer, Matthew’s artistic practice has expanded to include installations and sculptures, which incorporate a unique blend of still and moving images and sound. These new works draw on archival photographs for their inspiration and re-examine historical narratives and the legacies of colonization.
This exhibition features early work by the artist, such as her dreamlike black and white film photographs from the series Memories of India and her thought-provoking self-portraits based on Edward S. Curtis’s photographs of Native Americans for An Indian from India. This show also includes the artist’s compelling recent work about the traumatic aftermath of the Partition of India in 1947: Open Wound 1947–Stories of Partition-India & Pakistan. The Newport Art Museum is premiering The Unremembered–Indian Soldiers from World War II and is showing The Unremembered–Indian Soldiers from the Italian Campaign of WWII for the first time in the United States. Both of these recent works explore the forgotten history of Indian soldiers who volunteered for the British during World War II. Blending photography, video, sound, sculpture, text, and narrative for her works, Matthew creates a dynamic and immersive experience for viewers while she recovers many all-too-neglected histories.”
For more information on the show, click here.
Photo: Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, An Indian from India—Warpaint, 2001. Archival digital print; left: 19th-century photo Black Bear Jr. Arapahoe” by F. A. Rinehart from the Denver Public Library, Denver, Colorado. Annu Palakunnathu Matthew Courtesy of the Artist & sepiaEYE, NYC.