Artists Index: Seema Mattu

Seema Mattu (b. 1993, Birmingham, lives and works in Birmingham and London) is a moving-image artist. “I’ve recently met an increasingly nuanced portrayal of subject matter I’m becoming more comfortable with sharing as my experiences evolve. My practice presents a self-awareness of the othered self in a digital space, comprised of four key components of minority: race, gender, caste and sexuality. The work is reflective of interwoven complexities around these states of consciousness and it exists as I do: Indian and gay. Indian and Valmiki. Indian and a woman. Gay and Valmiki. Gay and a woman. Valmiki and a woman. Indian and gay and Valmiki and a woman. These things complete the work(s) by forcing never-ending questions. As I deal with illicit subjects through an ethnic lens, I develop ways of coding - where the use of signifiers and subtleties, albeit humourous and throw- away, emphasise the reveal of things intended to be kept hidden. I’m also investigating ways in which performance shared on a digital platform can be enriched within the narrative of the suppressed ethnic woman. My self’s are characters that I manipulate to my advantage - and digital media has enabled this. My self and my selfies (whether visual, linguistic or other) are technologies of embodiment, an act of penetration between the body and digital media.”