Wangechi Mutu

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wangechi Mutu (b.1972, Nairobi, Kenya) is an artist who lives and works in New York. She moved to New York in the 1990s to study anthropology and fine art at Cooper Union (BFA, 1996), and Yale University (MFA, 2000).^[1]

She creates painted and collaged images of female figures, first painting outline images on Mylar, then adding detail with photographic fragments of idealised women collected from print magazines.

The figures generally feature grotesque distortions of form and skin texture, which critics read as commentary on a variety of feminist and racial issues ("of the history of women's representation, of cultural migration, global identity; of a litany of historical violence and destruction; of colonial legacies, exoticism and voyeuristic fascination"). ^[2]

Mutu’s work has exhibited internationally at galleries and museums including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Miami Art Museum, Tate Modern in London, the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York, Kunstpalast Dusseldorf in Germany, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. She participated in the 2004 Gwangju Biennale in South Korea. Her work has been featured in several 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 at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and the Barbican in London, and USA Today at The Royal Academy in London.

She is represented by Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in New York, Susanne Vielmetter in Los Angeles and Victoria Miro Gallery in London.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Wangechi Mutu, Sikkema Jenkins
• Wangechi Mutu, Susanne Vielmetter
• Poco a Go-Go Exhibition review by David Hatcher in X-TRA : Contemporary Art Quarterly