Wangechi mutu biography

Wangechi Mutu KenyanNairobi, Kenya. Works in the Collection. High Chair and Strange Fruit. Mutu used found and crafted objects for room-sized installations. These installations were initially used to view her videos. Her work focuses on and expands the female body, which she saw as the point of departure in her art.

Wangechi mutu biography: Wangechi Mutu (born June 22,

Mutu describes her transformations as a journey of rebirth and reincarnation, wherein her subjects meld with other materials, ultimately experiencing a renewal of their potential and power. Mutu established a studio in Kenya in and began splitting her time between Brooklyn and Nairobi. In order to blend the two lives that she used to adjust, Mutu, in various of her art pieces meticulously applied vibrant ink and paint to the nonabsorbent Mylar film, creating an intricately layered and textured foundation.

In her diverse sculpture practice, Mutu employs organic materials like paper pulp and Kenyan soil, alongside creating monumental pieces in bronze. Their unearthly eyes, elongated fingers, coiled garb, and mirror adornments—which recalled the traditional African lip plates worn by women of status—appeared historical yet futuristic, familiar but perplexing.

She was educated at Loreto Convent Msongari — As soon as Mutu graduated from Yale, her work began popping up in important shows--many of them international exhibitions and biennials. Everyone should travel, not just to see new things but to see new things in themselves. These travels back and forth, she says, help give her valuable perspective: New York has "an addictive potency," and its density of creative, entrepreneurial people inspires her greatly; Nairobi is "layered, wangechi mutu biography, and encourages a coexistence between humans and the natural world," and Mutu describes Kenya as a very attractive country, despite its "anglophone trauma.

The idea of having many roots, of having your feet really grounded in different places, is extremely empowering for me. Mutu's work crosses a variety of mediums, including collage, bricolage, video, performance, and sculpture, and investigates themes of gender, race, and colonialism. These mediums, many of which involve the mixing of materials, sources, and imagery, are more than just formal choices--they hint towards foundational themes of resilience and regeneration that appears throughout her oeuvre.

Mutu's work, in part, centers on the violence and misrepresentation experienced by Black women in contemporary society. A recurring theme of Mutu's work is her various depictions of femininity. Mutu uses the feminine subject in her art, even when the figures are more or less unrecognizable, whether by using the form itself or the texture and patterns the figure is made from.

Her use of otherworldly depictions for women, many times shown in a seemingly sexual or sensual pose, brings about discussion of the objectification of women. Whether through delicate lined patterns or familiar feminine builds, Mutu's various ways of representing feminine qualities is said to enhance the strength of the images or the significance of the issues presented.

Many of Mutu's artworks are known to be interpreted in contradictory ways, both seen as complicit to problematic society and as hopeful for future change in society. It's also been said that Mutu's use of such intentionally repulsive or otherworldly imagery may help women to step away from society's ideas of perfection and instead embrace their own imperfections and become more accepting of the flaws of others as well.

In these mangled forms, the struggle of women forced to comply with social expectations and historical oppressions is given physical form, portraying distinct inner turmoil. Much of this is accomplished through her use of mixed media, which allows for her to unmake and reimagine bodies through modes of collage. In her Sentinel series which has been active from until now, she creates regal and fierce abstract female forms made from clay, wood and various found materials.

In an interview with the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia curator, Rachel Kent, she states, "I try to stretch my own ideas about appropriate ways to depict women. Criticism, curiosity, and voyeurism lead me along, as I look at things I find hard to view — things that are sometimes distasteful or unethical".

Wangechi mutu biography: Wangechi Mutu was born in in

Mutu frequently uses "grotesque" textures in her artwork and has cited her mother's medical books on tropical diseases as an inspiration, stating that there is "nothing more insanely visually interesting and repulsive than a body infected with tropical disease; these are diseases that grow and fester and become larger than the being that they have infected, almost.

Mutu is able to enact personal and cultural transfigurations by transitioning from painting to sculpture and back again. Mutu says " This transition was so powerful because I used my mind as an object maker — I think I always painted like a sculptor. The themes and narratives of Mutu's work create a visual representation of certain social, political, and physical realities of the world today.

This includes issues of feminism, racism, the environment, and the effects of colonialism and rebuilding post-colonialism. As a result, she is able to generate unique perspectives by under-represented identities, thus broadening and improving discourse surrounding certain issues, while also recognizing and emphasizing the importance of these women and their experiences.

In her art, Mutu presents complex narratives of mental anguish and, in many ways, crises of identity. Her material transformations of the human body imply a theoretical layer, where psychological aspects of African experience can be represented. Furthermore, she uses her art as a way to examine how African identities and experiences on the whole are oversimplified in western discourse, bringing the reality of the intricacies of feminism and colonialism to the wangechi mutu biography through the aesthetics of collage, mixed media art, and Afrofuturism.

Mutu's work has been called "firmly Africanfuturist and Afrofuturist ", [ 21 ] as exemplified in her work, including one of her pieces titled The End of Eating Everything Specific elements of Mutu's art that situate her within this genre include her amalgamations of humans and machines, or cyborgswithin collages such as Family Tree [ 24 ] as well as the film The End of Eating Everything.

Additionally, Mutu's work consistently involves intentional re-imaginations of the African experience. In Misguided Little Unforgivable Hierarchiesshe examines social hierarchy and power relationships through the medium of collage, for "rankings of peoples have historically been constructed around fabricated racial and ethnic categories".

In this way, Afrofuturism acts as a lens for these subjects. The use of Afrofuturistic aesthetics also allows for creative freedom in rendering bodies and representations of identities and experiences, as can be seen with the presence of cyborgs and alien-like figures in her works. The presence of black women in a futuristic setting also acts as a pushback to ideas of evolutionism and cultural and social hierarchies.

By contextualizing these women in such extreme modern spaces, Mutu makes a statement -- that women of color are included in the idea of the idealistic "evolved" human. This rejects colonialist ideas about people of color being "less evolved", or modernist ideas about people of color being stuck in a less developed state. In the goal of creating distinct representations of struggles and tensions for female and African identities, the principles and aesthetics of Afrofuturism work well with Mutu's use of collage and mixed media art.

These elements form a more holistic approach to examining fractured identities. Aspects of feminine themes are used across Mutu's body of work. The majority of her artwork, whether in her collages, sculptures, photography, or performances; all of these highlights a female character. A handful of Mutu's works highlight the female figure and feminine features.

Using references to a black woman's body, Mutu uses the silhouette or actual photographic imagery of a woman to create the characters in her works. She also places a lot of emphasis on body language and the way the woman is situated within the work.

Wangechi mutu biography: Wangechi Mutu (born )

Another feminine aspect that Mutu draws from, is the idea of feminine power. She wanted to showcase the African American women as being on top of a pedestal to express a reclaim of black female power. She considers the black female experience in her pieces through her inspiration from female forms that showcase power in art history.

Mutu has exhibited sculptural installations. 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 as she stated, "I wanted to create a feast, a communing of minds and viewers Something has gone wrong, there is a tragedy or unfolding of evil".

It is a performance video in which a woman uses a panga [a type of machete] to chop up a log but the wood is wangechi mutu biography to sever. The action serves to emphasize Africa's history of being cut up into portions by colonial forces. The work was shot in a town in Presidio, Texasa town with racial tension and violence since it sits on the U.

Another installation of Mutu, Suspended Playtime is a series of bundles of garbage bags, wrapped in gold twine as if suspended in spiders' websall 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. As a visual artist, Mutu takes inspiration from fashion and travel magazines, pornography, ethnography, and mechanics.

The books consisted of strangely attractive, yet grotesque human figures fused with animals, plants, or machines. InWangechi Mutu's first-ever animated video, The End of Eating Everything[ 22 ] was created in collaboration with recording artist Santigoldcommissioned by the Nasher Museum of Art. At the exhibition's opening night, Mutu displayed a performance piece, wherein guests were encouraged to consume custom-made Wangechi Mutu chocolate mermaids.

The guests could obtain a mermaid only by "snapping a photo of their first bite, lick, taste", operating as a commentary on "the public consumption of brown bodies". For Performa 17Mutu designed a set that was part arena and part white cube gallery. Wearing a black velvet jumpsuit and large banana leaves on her arms, she created a site-specific live action painting within this space using black viscous matter.

The performance took place in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sackler Center for Feminist Art in October