a pocket full of posies

On the Broadway Billboard, Mattai presents a collage depicting young girls playfully dancing hand in hand—a celebration of innocence and new futures. This work is part of an ongoing collage series utilizing pages from Owen Jones’s 1856 book, Grammar of Ornament, widely critiqued for its Eurocentric perspective that marginalizes non-Western decorative traditions and simplifies cultural complexities. By reappropriating and remixing patterns from Jones’s “Indian No. 2” into the composition and narrative, Mattai dismantles stereotypes and empowers her female subjects with agency. The adorned gold trees symbolize the tree of life, a motif frequently employed by the artist as she reflects on the enduring bonds spanning generations of South Asian women.