Wangechi Mutu
Wangechi Mutu (b.1972, Nairobi, Kenya) is an artist and sculptor who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
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[edit] Early life
Originally from the Kenyan Kikuyu tribe, she 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).
[edit] Career
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.[1]
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.
[edit] Works
Mutu's works often make the female body central, and confront the viewer with "plant-like or animal-like elements and intertwined abstract patterns" [2] that merge the organic and the surreal with human forms. She has predominantly used watercolour and collage on paper. Her collage 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. 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.
[edit] Literature, reviews and criticism
- ^ Provocative Artist Wangechi Mutu to Tear Up Gallery Walls in Canadian Debut, AGO press release, 2/2/2010
- ^ Hans Werner Holzwarth, ed. (2008). Art Now, Vol. 3: A cutting-edge selection of today's most exciting artists. Taschen. pp. 332. ISBN 9783836505116.
- Resonant Surgeries: The Collaged World of Wangechi Mutu, Interview by Robert Enright, Border Crossings Magazine, February 2008
- Interview with Wangechi Mutu by Aimée Reed, Daily Serving, April 12, 2010
- Cut & Paste by Okwui Enwezor, Arise Magazine, February 2011
- We categorize what we’re afraid of: An encounter with Wangechi Mutu by Matthew Evans, Deutsche Bank Artworks ArtMag, #59, 2010
- Wangechi Mutu by Alpesh Kantilal Patel, Artforum, November 17, 2010
- Wangechi Mutu: Hunt Bury Flee by Karen Rosenberg, The New York Times, November 12, 2010
[edit] External links
- Wangechi Mutu Studio, New York
- Wangechi Mutu at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin
- Wangechi Mutu This You Call Civilization? at Art Gallery of Ontario. Online resources include video and and audio.
- CNN African Voices special on Wangechi Mutu
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