URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Winter_2015_Melissa-McCarthy

In the hands of world-renowned photographer Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, a camera opens a portal, through which we can step into a life; it is a tool that offers a glimpse of the underlying personal story. Matthew, a professor of art and director of the Center for the Humanities at the University of Rhode Island (URI) and Fulbright fellowship recipient, also brings to her artwork a global perspective that lends unexpected insight and breeds deeper engagement. She has long been interested in photography because of its connection to reality and the perceptions and assumptions about that supposed reality. Her work communicates ideas and points of view that people may not have considered, and her work seamlessly intertwines both the aesthetic and conceptual/political. She recounts, “My undergraduate education was in the sciences in India. From what I remember, my photography class shared one camera and two rolls of film for the entire semester!” Despite the lack of resources, Matthew credits the class with introducing her to photography and to the possibilities of communicating ideas visually. Exploring Ident i t ies Born in England, Matthew moved to India when she was 11 years old, which gave her an amalgamation of an accent that is faintly British, Indian and American. She says, “People often ask me where am I really from. If I say that I am a Rhode Islander, no one believes me! If I say I am an Indian, they often think I am a Native American and so I often have to clarify that I am an Indian from India.” Matthew, now living in the United States, finds that her varied background influences her point of view, opinions, and is the source of inspiration for her work. She explains, “My work explores the experience of navigating between multiple cultures.”

Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, professor of art photo by David H. Wells

A camera opens a portal , through which we can s tep into a l i fe.

University of Delaware in 1997.

She draws on her experience as a young woman growing up in India after a childhood in England. The portfolio “Bollywood Satirized” explores her rejection of certain traditional women’s roles in Indian society, after experiencing more equality in England. This work was shown at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University from November 2014 to January 2015. “In ‘An Indian from India,’ I look at the other ‘Indian,’” Matthew says. “I play on my own ‘otherness,’ using photographs of Native Americans from the late 19th century and early 20th century that perpetuated and reinforced stereotypes.” She found similarities in how the turn of the 20th century photographers of Native Americans looked at what they called the primitive natives, in ways that is similar to the colonial gaze of the 19th century British photographers working in India. After graduating from the University of Madras in Chennai, India, in 1986, Matthew received her master’s of fine arts focusing on photography from the

Matthew has presented more than 30 successful solo exhibitions and a number of group exhibitions. Her work has been shown regionally, nationally, and internationally, including exhibitions at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI, Newark Art Museum, Newark, NJ, the Guangzhou Biennial of Photography, China and at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C. Her first solo museum exhibition is scheduled for the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada for May 2015 and a solo

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Annu Palakunnathu Matthew & sepiaEYE, nyc

winter / 2015 page 43