BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY : AFRO-KENYANIAN " WANGECHI MUTU " IS AN ARTIST AND SCULPTOR CND CONSIDERED AS ONE OF AFRICA MOST IMPORTANT CONTEMPORARY ARTIST : GOES INTO THE " HALL OF BLACK GENIUS "

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Wangechi Mutu

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Wangechi Mutu
Born	22 June 1972 (age 42) Nairobi, Kenya

Wangechi Mutu (born 22 June 1972 in Nairobi, Kenya) is an artist and sculptor who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Mutu is considered by many to be one of the most important contemporary African artists of recent years, and her work has achieved much global acclaim.^[1]

Background and education

Originally from Kenya, Mutu was educated in Nairobi at Loreto Convent Msongari (1978–1989) and later studied at the United World College of the Atlantic, Wales (I.B., 1991). Mutu moved to New York in the 1990s, focusing on Fine Arts and Anthropology at The New School for Social Research and Parsons School of Art and Design. She earned a BFA from Cooper Union for the Advancement of the Arts and Science in 1996, and then received an MFA from Yale University (2000).

Career

Mutu's work has been exhibited at galleries and museums worldwide including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Miami Art Museum, Tate Modern in London, theStudio Museum in Harlem in New York, Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, Germany the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Her first solo exhibition at a major North American museum opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario in March 2010.^[2] Her first major solo exhibition, Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey^[3] in the United States opened at Nasher Museum of Art on 21 March 2013.^[4]

She participated in the 2008 Prospect 1 Biennial in New Orleans and the 2004 Gwangju Biennale in South Korea. Her work has been featured in major exhibitions includingGreater New York at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and the Barbican Centre in London, and USA Today at the Royal Academy in London.

On 23 February 2010, Wangechi Mutu was honoured by Deutsche Bank as their first "Artist of the Year". The prize included a solo exhibition at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin. Titled My Dirty Little Heaven, the show travelled in June 2010 to Wiels Center for Contemporary Art (nl) in Forest, Belgium.

She is represented by Barbara Gladstone in New York, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects in Los Angeles and Victoria Miro Gallery in London.

Wangechi Mutu Hundred Lavish Months of Bushwack, 2004

From 20 September to 20 October 2013, the creative team of Wangechi Mutu is taking part in the main project of the 5th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art.^[5]

Works

While Mutu employs a variety of mediums including video, installation, and sculpture, she is best known for her large-scale collages on pieces of Mylar.^[6] Mutu's works often make the female body central, and confront the viewer with "plant-like or animal-like elements and intertwined abstract patterns"^[7] that merge the organic and the surreal with human forms. These hybrid creatures have bodies made of a combination of machine, animal, human and monster parts. Mutu constructs these warrior-like females out of magazine cutouts, sculpted and painted surfaces, and found materials.The sources her collage images range from a variety of media, including commercial fashion and lifestyle pornography, and automobile and motorcycle magazines. These distorted yet elegant figures that Mutu creates are based on the concept that, "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."^[8] This idea is illustrated in works such as One Hundred Lavish Months of Bushwhack(2004). In this collage we see a reptile-like hybrid creature, poised as if she is on guard and tense. Her head and foot bleed profusely while a smaller, monstrous creature appears to be holding up the wounded figure. This piece, like much of Mutu's work, speaks to a historical, cultural, and personal narrative of postimperialism, feminism, and globalisation by combining images of the female body with contemporary narratives of African culture and tradition.^[8]

Other collages of Mutu include A'Gave You (2008) is a collage over 2 metres in height, representing a female figure beside a large tentacled monster, and surrounded by serpentine creatures.

More recently, Mutu has exhibited sculptural installations.^[9] In 2006, Mutu and British architect David Adjaye collaborated on a project. They transformed the Upper East Side Salon 94 townhouse in New York into a subterraneous dinner party-setting titled Exhuming Gluttony: A Lover’s Requiem. 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. This vicious hunger was seen as a connection between images of The Last Supper, the climate of the current art-buying world, and the war in Iraq.^[1]

Another installation of Mutu, Suspended Playtime (2008) is a series of bundles of garbage bags, wrapped in gold twine as if suspended in spiders' webs, all 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.

In 2013, Wangechi Mutu's first-ever animated video, The End of eating Everything,^[10] was created in collaboration with recording artist Santigold, commissioned by the Nasher Museum of Art. The video was animated by Awesome + Modest.^[11]