Daughter/Daughter

Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, artist

born 1964

Daughter/Daughter, 2008–2009

Where object was made: United States

Material/technique: gold paper; leather; inkjet print; transparency

Dimensions:
Object Height/Width/Depth (Height x Width x Depth): closed 19.6 x 15.1 x 2.2 cm
Object Height/Width/Depth (Height x Width x Depth): 7 11/16 x 5 15/16 x 0 7/8 in
Object Height/Width/Depth (Height x Width x Depth): open 19.6 x 31.4 x 1 cm
Object Height/Width/Depth (Height x Width x Depth): 7 11/16 x 12 3/8 x 0 3/8 in

Credit line: Museum purchase: Helen Foresman Spencer Art Acquisition Fund

Accession number: 2013.0120

Not on display

Add to portfolio

If you wish to reproduce this image, please submit an image request

Images

Label texts

Past Presence

In Daughter/Daughter, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew juxtaposes a historical photograph of a Native American woman and her child with a portrait of herself and her stepdaughter.
“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. It seems strange that all this confusion started because Christopher Columbus thought he had found the Indies and called the native people of America collectively as Indians. In this portfolio, I look at the other ‘Indian.’ I play on my own ‘otherness,’ using photographs of Native Americans from the 19th century and early 20th century that perpetuated and reinforced stereotypes. I find similarities in how 19th- and early 20th-century
photographers of Native Americans looked at what they called the primitive natives, similar to the colonial gaze of the 19th-century British photographers working in India.”
—Annu Palakunnathu Matthew