Join Indo-Caribbean artists Suchitra Mattai and Wendy Nanan, both featured in the exhibition Fragments of Epic Memory, for a conversation with writer and academic Ramabai Espinet about their multi-disciplinary work.

Suchitra Mattai is a multi-disciplinary artist of Indo-Caribbean descent whose experiences living in several countries and cultural contexts have greatly shaped her artistic practice. Recent and upcoming projects include a commission for the Sharjah Biennial 14, “State of the Art 2020” at Crystal Bridges Museum/the Momentary, a Denver Art Museum and the Biennial of the Americas jointly sponsored installation, a commission for the MCA’s Octopus Initiative, solo exhibitions at the Boise Art Museum of Art (2021), K Contemporary Art (2020), Unit London (2022), Hollis Taggart NYC (2022), and the Center for Visual Arts, Metropolitan State University of Denver (2018) and group exhibitions at Kavi Gupta Gallery (2021), Aicon Gallery (2021), Unit London ( 2021), Pen and Brush NYC (2019), and the San Antonio Museum of Art (2021). She received an MFA in painting and drawing and an MA in South Asian art from the University of Pennsylvania.

Wendy Nanan was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, where she presently lives and works. She attended art college in England where she graduated with a BFA Painting and has been consistently showing at home and abroad since that time in group and solo shows. She works in sculpture and painting, using mixed media processes often involving found objects. Currently Nanan is showing in the group exhibition,"Visible Man" at the BGSU Fine Arts Center, Bowling Green, and has a solo exhibition currently on view at the Art Museum of The Americas, Washington, D.C. Her work is included in many public and private collections, including Trinidad and Tobago’s National Museum.

Dr. Ramabai Espinet is a writer, critic and academic. She was for many years a Professor of English at Seneca College, a post from which she retired recently. She continues to lecture in the Caribbean Studies program at the University of Toronto, and is a Fellow of CERLAC (Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean) at York University.  Ramabai Espinet’s works include a novel, The Swinging Bridge (2003), Nuclear Seasons, poetry (1991), Indian Robber Talk, performance poetry (1995), The Princess of Spadina (1992) and Ninja’s Carnival (1993). Her short fiction and poetry have been widely anthologized and published in journals. She is also the editor of Creation Fire: A CAFRA Anthology of Caribbean Women’s Poetry (1990), encompassing the work of 121 Caribbean poets in several Caribbean languages. Coming Home, a documentary on Espinet’s work, was produced by Leda Serene (Toronto) in 2005.