wangechi mutu
Wangechi Mutu is a multimedia artist who engages with topics such as sexual identity and gender, consumerism, luxury, and the divide between nature and humanity. Her art is associated with the Afrofuturism movement, which envisions alternate origins of African people.
Mutu's work explores themes of gender, African identity, and colonization using a wide array of mediums such as collage, film, performance, and sculpture. She defied the long-standing tradition of cultural and artistic expression to reflect all that is coveted or disliked on the body of women by collecting, juxtaposing, and reworking photos and items.
On the right: Alien Awe I, 2003
She shifted away from three-dimensional art in favor of collage, ripping up fashion and porn magazines as well as other printed materials and adorning her creations with paint, sequins, and beads. Mutu's numerous techniques of depicting feminine characteristics, whether through delicate linear patterns or typical feminine structures, are thought to increase the power of the imagery or the gravity of the themes addressed.
On the left: Riding Death in My Sleep, 2002
Wangechi Mutu was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1972. Mutu developed her love of art as a child in Nairobi, where her father's paper company provided her with supplies.
She was exposed to the brutal realities of war and violence as a child growing up during a politically turbulent period in Kenya's history; her experiences during this period would subsequently have an impact on her artwork. She left Kenya at 16 to attend high school in Wales and traveled to New York City in 1991, where she attended Parsons School of Design and subsequently Cooper Union (B.F.A., 1996). She relocated to Brooklyn in 2000 following her graduation from Yale University with a master's in sculpting. Mutu opened a studio in Nairobi in 2016 and began dividing her time between Brooklyn and Nairobi.
Mutu took early inspiration from her experiences at an all-girls Catholic school in Nairobi, as well as a number of tragic occurrences in Africa's colonial and postcolonial past.
Artists such as Hannah Hoch and Richard Hamilton have influenced her as well. Mutu merged photos from publications like Vogue and National Geographic, as well as vintage medical drawings, to create stunning blended figures in surreal surroundings. She adorned the figures' skin, accentuated their facial features, and swapped gears, wheels, and animal parts for their limbs.
On the right: Cervical Hypertrophy, 2005
Her work has been shown in solo exhibits at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin, the Wiels Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels, Duke University's Nasher Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She was the first commissioned artist to produce sculptures for the Met's façade niches in 2019.
On the left: Yo Mama, 2003
“Being taught to despise your body is being taught to perhaps admire someone else's body more than yours – being taught that your body is good for certain things and not for others”
On the right: Histology of the Different Classes of Uterine Tumors (series), 2005-2006
Above: In Two Canoe, 2022