The Lycoming College Art Department will host “Between Cultures,” an art exhibit by Annu Palakunnathu Matthew from Feb. 20 to March 27 in the Art Gallery in Snowden Library. A gallery reception will be held on Thursday, Feb. 20 from 4 to 5:30 p.m., with an artist talk at 4:30 p.m. The reception is free and open to the public.
The exhibition will feature artwork from four of Matthew’s portfolios, “Open Wound,” created during the artist’s recent Fulbright fellowship in India, “An Indian from India,” “Re-Generation” and “Bollywood Satirized.”
“Open Wound” explores the turmoil of families affected by the Partition in India and Pakistan in 1947, during which 12 million people were displaced within three months and more than a million died. “An Indian from India” is a series through which Matthew explores her identity in America in relation to the confusion Christopher Columbus created by naming Native Americans “Indians.”
“I look at the other ‘Indian.’ I play on my own ‘otherness,’ using photographs of Native Americans from the nineteenth and early twentieth century that perpetuated and reinforced stereotypes,” her artist statement says.
Through “Re-Generation,” Matthew analyzes the potential of photographs and animations to take us back in time, and the art from “Bollywood Satirized” is a critical commentary on the social expectations Matthew experienced as a woman growing up in India.
Matthew received a Fulbright fellowship in 2012 and the inaugural SPE Future Focus Project support grant in 2013. She has recently participated in exhibitions at Sepia International, the RISD Museum, Newark Art Museum, 2009 Guangzhou Biennial of Photography, the Tang Museum and the Smithsonian Institute Museum of National History.
Her work is included in “BLINK,” a book that celebrates the quality and vision of today’s 100 most exciting international contemporary photographers, according to Phaidon, the publisher, as well as in “Self-Portraits,” “Home Truths: Motherhood, Photography and Loss” by Susan Bright and “The Digital Eye” by Sylvia Wolf.
Matthew is professor of photography and director of the Center for the Humanities at the University of Rhode Island. She is represented by SepiaEYE, New York City, and the Tasveer Gallery, India.
Lycoming College is a four-year, residential liberal arts and sciences school dedicated to the undergraduate education of 1,400 students. Its rigorous academic program, vibrant residential community and supportive faculty foster successful student outcomes. Lycoming offers 36 academic majors and is recognized as a Tier 1 institution by U.S. News & World Report. Founded in 1812 and located near the banks of the Susquehanna River in Williamsport, Pa., Lycoming is one of the 50 oldest colleges in the nation. For more information, visit www.lycoming.edu.