Installation photo credit: Dario Lasagni
The New Museum will present a major solo exhibition of the work of Wangechi Mutu (b. 1972, Nairobi), which will bring together over one hundred works from across her twenty-five-year career.
Representing the full breadth of her practice, the presentation will encompass painting, collage, drawing, sculpture, film, and performance. Mutu first gained acclaim for her collage-based practice exploring camouflage, transformation, and mutation. She extends these strategies to her work across various media, developing hybrid, fantastical forms that fuse mythical and folkloric narratives with layered sociohistorical references. “Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined” will trace connections between recent developments in the artist’s sculptural practice and her decades-long exploration of the legacies of colonialism, globalization, and African and diasporic cultural traditions. At once culturally specific and transnational in scope, Mutu’s work grapples with contemporary realities, while proffering new models for a radically changed future informed by feminism, Afrofuturism, and interspecies symbiosis.
This exhibition is curated by Margot Norton, Chief Curator, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (former Allen and Lola Goldring Senior Curator at the New Museum), and Vivian Crockett, Curator, with Ian Wallace, Curatorial Assistant.