The Exhibition
Experiencing Black Life Through the Visual Arts – Click on the Image for a slideshow of full size images.
Wangechi Mutu art practice covers a wide range of disciplines and themes. One of the most exciting Black female artist of African origin, this body of images on display, offers a brief spotlight on a fantastic world, somewhere inside all of us. The ferocious wars of Life over Death, are played out in these works. At first glance, the images appears to be violent, bizarre, repulsive, and grotesque. Yet, they make visible and echos, areas of our collective unconscious in the current times.
This excellent Black female artist of African origin, creates figures looking like pregnant creatures. Others are wounded, and then being repaired. She makes hybrid humans-cyborgs, and fierce human machines. Through the process of transmogrification, similar to the changes from a creeping caterpillar, to a beautiful butterfly. The feminine energies are victorious, on the battlefields of mental torture, anguish, and psychological trauma.
As the tragedy of evil unfolds, the hybrid creatures who inhabit the strange world the artist creates, are stranded, born out alienation, suffering from fractured identities, inner turmoil, and cultural transfiguration. Wangechi believes art is an ancient language, that spoke to us, long before the written word, and is still speaking to us today.
The Artist
Born in Kenya, 1972, Wangechi Mutu is known for painting, collage, immersive installations, films, sculpture, and performance. Working between studios in Nairobi, Kenya, and Brooklyn, New York, her work explores female constructs, cultural and political trauma, notions of power, beauty, and environmental destruction. Currently, considered to be one of the most excellent artist of African origin, she left Kenya at 16 and began studying in Wales, UK.
Wangechi continued learning in America, at Parsons School of Art & Design. In 1996 she achieved her BFA, and a MA in 2000, from Yale School of Art. Speaking about her work, Wangechi explains, “I try to stretch my own ideas about appropriate ways to depict women. Curiosity, criticism, and voyeurism lead me along, as I look at things I find hard to view. Things that are sometimes distasteful or unethical.” Wangechi Mutu, Well known in the world of the Arts, we hope this brief show will assist to bring this major Black female artist, to the attention of the Global African Village.
Her mother’s medical books on tropical diseases, were inspirations to make many of the works on show here.International art experts, have placed her work in the genre titled ‘Afrofuturist’ where and when Black artist, utilise science fiction to re-image different realities and futures for people of African origin. Visit – Wikipedia.org.
