Internationally renowned for her formidable work including collage, paintings, film, installation, and sculpture, Wangechi Mutu explores questions of self-representation, gender constructs, cultural trauma, and environmental degradation, and their interconnections. She was first recognized for paintings and collages that examined myriad forms of violence and misrepresentation visited upon women, especially Black women. With her characteristic morphing, hybrid, and organic forms, she portrays shared and inherent alienations that often appear as powerful hybrid female creatures within dystopian dreamscapes. In Mutu’s work, the figure becomes a place through which to rewrite and reimagine oneself and to break certain codes in both the man-made and natural worlds. Her visual language is further enriched by experimentation with unexpected materials, some imbued with cultural signifiers, like Kenyan tea, volcanic red soil, gems, and seeds. Mutu’s work presents a visceral and compelling discourse within dominant modes of representation.
Wangechi Mutu was born in 1972 in Nairobi, Kenya, and she works in New York and Nairobi. In 2019, she was commissioned to create sculptures for The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Fifth Avenue façade niches—the first-ever such installation on Met Museum’s historic exterior – inaugurating a new annual series.
Recent exhibitions include Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined, New Museum, New York; What Is Left Unspoken, Love, at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, New York; Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina; Wangechi Mutu: I Am Speaking, Are You Listening?, Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA (2021); University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, (2020 – 2021); A Promise to Communicate, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Boston, MA (2018); Wangechi Mutu: The End of eating Everything, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX (2018); Water Woman, The Contemporary Austin, TX (2017); Journeys into Peripheral Worlds, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines (2017); Banana Stroke, Performa 17 Biennial, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2017); The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2016); SITE Santa Fe (2016); the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (2014); the Mary and Leigh Block Museum, Northwestern University, Illinois (2014); the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia, touring to Orange County Museum, California (both 2013); Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal (2012); Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden, (2012); Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2010); Art Gallery of Ontario, Ontario (2010); Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2009); and Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2008).
Her work was featured at the 56th International Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Venice Biennale (2015), and has been presented in exhibitions at institutions including Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA (2019); travelled to Gibbes Museum, Charleston (2019); Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, MI (2019); Smith College Museum of Art, MA (2020); Frye Art Museum, Seattle (2021); Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City (2021); The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. (2020); Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel (2020); Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2020); Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, USA (2019); MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts (2019); Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina (2018); Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX (2018); Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo (MAXXI), Rome, Italy (2018); Museum of Contemporary Art Africa inaugural exhibition, Cape Town (2017–2019); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2020, 2017 and 2014); Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2017); Studio Museum in Harlem (2017); Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2016- 2017); Fondazione Prada, Milan (2016); Yale University School of Art, New Haven (2016); Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco (2016); the Grand Palais, Paris (2015); Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco (2015); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humblebaek (2015); Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC (2015 and 2014); Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt (2014); Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro (2013); Tate St. Ives, United Kingdom (2013); National Gallery of Canada, Ontario (2013); Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India (2012); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012); Brooks Art Museum, Memphis (2012); MOCA, Los Angeles (2010); Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver (2010); Tate Liverpool, United Kingdom (2010); 10th Biennale d’art Contemporain de Lyon (2009); and The New Museum, New York (2008). Wangechi Mutu received the 2010 Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year award.
She is the recipient of the African Art Award from the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, National Artist Award from Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Cultural Leadership Award from the American Foundation of Arts, United States Artist Grant, and Artist of the Year Awards from both the Brooklyn Museum and Deutsche Guggenheim.
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Selected Solo and Two Person Exhibitions
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Selected Group Exhibitions
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Film/TV/Radio
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Interviews
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Catalogues
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Bibliography
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Awards, Grants and Fellowships
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Public Collections