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“As an immigrant, I am often questioned about where I am ‘really from.’ When I say that I am Indian, I often have to clarify that I am an Indian from India. Not an American-Indian, but rather an Indian-American, South-Asian Indian or even an Indian-Indian. It seems strange that all this confusion started because Christopher Columbus thought he had found India and called the native people of America collectively as Indians.”

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“As an immigrant, I am often questioned about where I am ‘really from.’ When I say that I am Indian, I often have to clarify that I am an Indian from India. Not an American-Indian, but rather an Indian-American, South-Asian Indian or even an Indian-Indian. It seems strange that all this confusion started because Christopher Columbus thought he had found India and called the native people of America collectively as Indians.”

It is this very query that inspired Annu Matthew to investigate the possibility of her being the “other”. Mimicking the look and feel of photographic images of Native Americans from the nineteenth century, Matthew shoots herself in similar garb to the original image, and then places both the original and the contemporary side by side. By recreating the original, Matthew plays with the possibility of what could be. The rustic sepia tones of the images add to their aura of authenticity, further complication the relationship between self and other, genuine and counterfeit

“Being born in England, raised in India and now living in America, my mixed or ‘masala’ background continues to shape my life. My photographs are interpretations rather than a documentation of my life as an Asian-Indian woman living in a Diaspora. They serve as invitations into my personal reality shaped by influences that are cultural, personal, and photographic,” states the photographer on the Tasveer Arts website.

Born in 1964, Matthew completed her Bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the Women’s Christian College, Chennai. In 1997, she received her Master’s degree in photography from the University of Rhode Island, Kingston. Matthew has participated in numerous shows worldwide. Her most recent solo shows include ‘An Indian from India’ and ‘Memories of India’ at Matthieu Foss Gallery and Chatterjee and Lal, Mumbai, and Tasveer Arts, Bangalore, New Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai, in 2007; ‘The Virtual Immigrant’ at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum in 2006; ‘An Indian from India’ at Gallery Saintonage, Montana, in 2006; and ‘Bollywood Satirized’ at Lane Hall, University of Michigan, also in 2006. Amongst her recent group endeavors are ‘India: Public Places, Private Spaces’ at the Newark Art Museum, New Jersey, in 2007-2008; ‘Air Asia’ at Langhans Galerie Praha, Czech Republic, in 2007; ‘Relationships A Ten-year Bond’ at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz; ‘Best Buys’ at Decordova Museum, Massachusetts; ‘Four Indians’ at the Newport Art Museum, Rhode Island; and ‘Mixing Speak’ a the New Art Center, Massachusetts, all in 2006.

Matthew’s works have also been featured in the book ‘Blink’, published by Phaidon, which showcases the work of the 100 most exciting international contemporary photographers and digital artists. She has also been artist in residence at Yaddo, an artists’ community in Saratoga Springs, New York, and at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

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