Biography

ANNU PALAKUNNATHU MATTHEW’s (b. United Kingdom; lives in Rhode Island, USA) photo-based work draws on old photographs to re-examine historical narratives in the US and South Asia. Though trained as a photographer, her work increasingly uses the ever-expanding digital toolbox and has moved into installations. The result is a blend of still and moving imagery that shifts the viewer’s perspective to question established and marginalized histories.
Matthew’s recent solo exhibitions include the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada, Nuit Blanche Toronto, the Newport Art Museum, and sepiaEYE, NYC. Matthew has also exhibited her work at the RISD Museum, Newark Art Museum, MFA Boston, MFA Houston, Victoria & Albert Museum, 2018 Kochi-Muziris Biennale, 2018 Fotofest Biennial, 2009 Guangzhou Photo Biennial, as well as at the Smithsonian. Her essay on the unremembered Indian soldiers of World War II was recently (2022) included in Ars Orientalis, the journal from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art.
Grants and fellowships that have supported her work include a John Gutmann, MacColl Johnson, two Fulbright Fellowships, and grants from the Rhode Island State Council of the Arts. In addition, she has been an artist in residence at Civitella Ranieri, Lightwork, MacDowell, Woodstock Center for Photography, and Yaddo.

As Holland Cotter of the New York Times wrote about her 2016 solo exhibition at sepiaEYE in New York, “…The mostly album-size photographs in this compact but far-ranging gallery survey are about the intensities and confusions of a cultural mixing that makes the artist, psychologically, both a global citizen and an outsider, at home and in transit, wherever she is. And it’s about photography as a document and fiction: souvenir, re-enactment, and imaginative projection. A beautiful show that could too easily slip away.”
Minor Matters Books and sepiaEYE published her monograph, “The Answers Take Time,” in December 2022.
Annu Palakunnathu Matthew is a Professor of Art at the University of Rhode Island. She was also the Director of the Center for the Humanities from 2014-2019 and the 2015-17 Silvia Chandley Professor in Peace Studies and Non-violence. Matthew is represented by sepiaEYE, NYC.
www.annumatthew.com