Seema Mattu is a Valmiki world-building artist, whose multimodal practice follows the logic of a speculative theme park - known as SEEMAWORLD.
Seema Mattu is a Valmiki world-building artist, whose multimodal practice follows the logic of a speculative theme park - known as SEEMAWORLD.
Photograph by Chris Seddon
(The Scrawny Beauties of Ethni City (2023) exhibition launch at QUAD, Derby.
With its own internal lore, SEEMAWORLD is hosted by fantastical deities who act as vessels for interweaving strands of output. Rooted in British South Asian culture (and its relationship to Birmingham), speculative storytelling unfolds through immersive real life environments, sculpture, mixed-media animation, moving image and an emergent folk sound. These works combine filmic, sonic and spatial spectacle to explore and subvert complex themes centring: systems of caste, queer desire and technological iterations (and reiterations) of thing and self.
Seema’s work has been shown widely, including projects with: Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, New Art City, Blindspot Gallery (Hong Kong), Film London (FLAMIN Fellowship 2021-2022), and Wysing Arts Centre (2023 Residency). In 2021, she was awarded an International Digital Fellowship at QUAD (Derby), leading to her first solo show in 2023. She has been an Incidental Artist at Eastside Projects (Birmingham) since 2024 and has launched a solo exhibition in Spring 2026 - which will evolve across FACT (Liverpool) in Autumn 2026 and Focal Point Gallery (Southend-on-Sea) in Spring 2027.