Annu Palakunnathu Matthew
Born 1964, Stourport-on-Severn, England, lives and works in Providence, RI
Death Sentence, from the “Bollywood Satirized” series, 1999, luminage digital print, Museum Purchase, 2001.64
Annu Palakunnathu Matthew was born in England, raised in India and now lives in the United States. Her art both celebrates and critiques the customs and culture of India. In her Bollywood Satirized series, she comments on societal expectations of women, discrimination, arranged marriages, and restrictions of Indian culture. Using actual posters from the Indian Bollywood movie industry, Matthew scans them into the computer, and alters the images to critique Indian cultural attitudes towards marriage and relationships. Death Sentence is one in this series, in which the artist, through added text and other manipulations, questions the tradition of arranged marriage and equates it to a kind of "death sentence.” This work was purchased from The 2001 DeCordova Annual Exhibition.
