Through collage, Wangechi Mutu composes otherworldly characters that embody broad themes, such as racial identity, the female body, and African colonial history, within a singular form. Addressing these concerns, Mutu creates futuristic figures with strangely contorted or amputated limbs, as demonstrated in this 2003 'Untitled example. These distortions of the female form evoke a struggle between an inner and outer self. She has said, "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." Mutu's collages are pieced together from a variety of sources including vintage medical illustrations, fashion magazines, and pornography, and are often adorned with glitter, paint, fabric, or beads.
Born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1972, Wangechi Mutu received her BFA in 1996 from New York’s Cooper Union for the Advancement of the Arts and Science and went on to earn her MFA in 2000 from Yale University. She was awarded the Cooper Union Urban Visionaries Awards, Emerging Talent Award in 2008, the same year she received The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant. In 2010 she was named the Deutsche Guggenheim Artist of the Year, Berlin, Germany. Her work has been well received throughout the world and has been displayed in recent solo exhibitions at Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY (2010); Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany (2010); Wiels Contemporary Museum, Brussels, Belgium (2010); Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA (2009); Kusthalle Wien Museum, Vienna, Austria (2008); The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA (2005); and Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL (2005). She is represented by Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York, NY; Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles, CA; and Victoria Miro Gallery, London, UK.
Selected Public Collections:
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
The San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art, San Francisco, CA
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL
The Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
