Kenyan-born Wangechi Mutu is a Brooklyn-based artist is at the forefront of the Afrofuturism – she combines different elements of science and historical fiction in order to attempt and explain the dilemmas of people of color today and in the past. Mutu’s multi-media large-scale collages are beautifully elegant yet strikingly distorted. She sources for her collages from various forms of media ranging from pornography to motorcycling. Her forms quite often convey a female figure, twisting, fleshy, and violent. Voluptuous, savage, aggressive and sexual, favorite motifs include snakes, eyes, long fingernails, and glitter. Fleshy and a rich, the seductive combinations of pattern and color both repel and attract.
Ms. Mutu is represented by Barbara Gladstone in NY, Susanne Vielmetter in L.A. and Victoria Miro in London.
Click here to see a video tour of her Brooklyn studio.
Wangechi Mutu, Tumors: That Bullet Semen Spills Only Misfortune, 2004. Ink, acrylic, contact paper, sequences and photocollage on Mylar, 68.5″ X 42″
Notice the bicycles and motorcycles within the “planet-like” figure.
Image courtesy of: Wangechi Mutu
Wangechi Mutu in her studio
Image courtesy of: Deutsche Bank Art Magazine, photographed by: Chris Sanders
An installation at Mutu’s 2013 show, “Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey” at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.
Image courtesy of: Suzanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects