Wangechi Mutu

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Wangechi Mutu (born June 25, 1972 in Nairobi, Kenya) is an artist and sculptor who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Mutu is considered by many to be one of the most important contemporary African artists of recent years, and her work has achieved much global acclaim.[1]

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Background and Education [edit]

Originally from Kenya, Mutu was educated in Nairobi at Loreto Convent Msongari (1978–1989) and later studied at the United World College of the Atlantic, Wales (I.B., 1991). Mutu moved to New York in the 1990s, focusing on Fine Arts and Anthropology at The New School for Social Research and Parsons School of Art and Design. She earned a BFA from Cooper Union for the Advancement of the Arts and Science in 1996, and then received an MFA from Yale University (2000).

Career [edit]

Mutu’s work has been exhibited at galleries and museums worldwide including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Miami Art Museum, Tate Modern in London, the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York, Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, Germany, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Her first solo exhibition at a major North American museum opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario in March 2010.[2]

She participated in the 2008 Prospect 1 Biennial in New Orleans and the 2004 Gwangju Biennale in South Korea. Her work has been featured in major exhibitions including Greater New York at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and the Barbican Centre in London, and USA Today at the Royal Academy in London.

On February 23, 2010, Wangechi Mutu was honored by Deutsche Bank as their first "Artist of the Year". The prize included a solo exhibition at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin. Titled My Dirty Little Heaven, the show traveled in June 2010 to Wiels Center for Contemporary Art in Brussels.

She is represented by Barbara Gladstone in New York, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects in Los Angeles and Victoria Miro Gallery in London.

Wangechi Mutu Hundred Lavish Months of Bushwack, 2004

Works [edit]

While Mutu employs a variety of mediums including video, installation, and sculpture, she is best known for her large-scale collages on pieces of Mylar.[3] Mutu's works often make the female body central, and confront the viewer with "plant-like or animal-like elements and intertwined abstract patterns" [4] that merge the organic and the surreal with human forms. These hybrid creatures have bodies made of a combination of machine, animal, human, and monster parts. Mutu constructs these warrior-like females out of magazine cutouts, sculpted and painted surfaces, and found materials.The sources her collage images range from a variety of media, including commercial fashion and lifestyle magazines, pornography, and automobile and motorcycle magazines. These distorted yet elegant figures that Mutu creates are based on the concept that, “Females carry the marks, language and nuances of their culture more than the male. Anything that is desired or despised is always placed on the female body.”[5] This idea is illustrated in works such as One Hundred Lavish Months of Bushwhack (2004). In this collage we see a reptile-like hybrid creature, poised as if she is on guard and tense. Her head and foot bleed profusely while a smaller monstrous creature appears to be holding up the wounded figure. This piece, like much of Mutu’s work, speaks to a historical, cultural, and personal narrative of postimperialism, feminism, and globalization by combining images of the female body with contemporary narratives of African culture and tradition. [5]

Other collages of Mutu include A'Gave You (2008) is a collage over 2 metres in height, representing a female figure beside a large tentacled monster, and surrounded by serpentine creatures.

More recently, Mutu has exhibited sculptural installations.[6]In 2006, Mutu and British architect David Adjaye collaborated together on a project. They transformed the Upper East Side Salon 94 townhouse in New York into a subterraneous dinner party-setting titled Exhuming Gluttony: A Lover’s Requiem. Furs and bullet holes adorned the walls while wine bottles dangled in a careless chandelier-like form above the stained table. The table’s multiple legs resembled thick femurs with visibly delicate tibias, and the whole space had a pungent aroma. The artists strove to show a moment of gluttony. This vicious hunger was seen as a connection between images of The Last Supper, the climate of the current art-buying world, and the war in Iraq.[1]

Another installation of Mutu, Suspended Playtime (2008) is a series of bundles of garbage bags, wrapped in gold twine as if suspended in spiders' webs, all suspended from the ceiling over the viewer. The installation makes reference to the common use of garbage bags as improvised balls and other playthings by African children.

Notes [edit]

  1. ^ a b Enwezor, Okwui (February 2011). "Cut & Paste". Arise Magazine. Retrieved 13 April 2013. 
  2. ^ Provocative Artist Wangechi Mutu to Tear Up Gallery Walls in Canadian Debut, AGO press release, 2/2/2010
  3. ^ "A Fantastic Journey". Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Retrieved 13 April 2013. 
  4. ^ Hans Werner Holzwarth, ed. (2008). Art Now, Vol. 3: A cutting-edge selection of today's most exciting artists. Taschen. p. 332. ISBN 9783836505116. 
  5. ^ a b Merrily, Kerr. "WANGECHI MUTU". Retrieved 13 April 2013. 
  6. ^ Evans, Matthew. "An encounter with Wangechi Mutu". Deutsche Bank. Retrieved 13 April 2013. 

References [edit]

External links [edit]

Gallery Representation [edit]

Authority control
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