Mutu reveals that she made the stuffing from leftover magazines, printing paper and junk mail she had accumulated over the course of a decade. The large bulge in the middle references the modern problem of overconsumption. It's surrounded by a variety of mysterious bottles and vials. No one can possibly miss "Sleeping Serpent" (2014), a 31-foot mixed media figure with a blue ceramic face resting on a pillow that connects to a body wrapped in a scaly fabric. Photo: Dario Lasagni "The Sleeping Serpent" is 31 feet long and has a bulge in its body packed with junk mail and old magazines - a symbol of the world's overconsumption, says the artist Wangechi Mutu. It's a reference to women's labor in Mutu's Kenyan culture, Crockett says, but because the basket is woven from palm fronds, it's also a bridge to other equatorial cultures throughout Africa, India and South America.Ĭourtesy New Museum. The camera follows a woman - again, played by Mutu - balancing a growing array of objects in a woven basket on her head through rocky terrain until she collapses and explodes into the earth. This practice is evident in Mutu's work, notes Crockett, who points to her video "The End of Carrying All" (2015). Everyone should travel, not just to see new things but to see new things in themselves." She encourages anyone who can to examine their home countries from a different perspective and from a distance. In an email interview for this article, she wrote, "Making art and traveling are my greatest teachers. It's by crossing borders that Mutu has found her muses. The artist, whose work is featured in a show at the New Museum in New York City, divides her time between Nairobi and Brooklyn. Khadija Farah Wangechi Mutu at her studio in Nairobi, Kenya. Norton notes that the beautiful voice on the soundtrack also belongs to Mutu, who sings the Christian hymn in her native language of Kikuyu. It shows a woman played by Mutu walking into the waves. I felt deep sadness and became obsessed with Rwandan genocide, which I felt had a lot to do with borders and confining or defining people through colonization and eugenics."Īround the same time, Mutu created the video "Amazing Grace," an homage to the power of the ocean, which brought forth life but also destroyed so many through the slave trade and migrant boats. In the exhibition catalog, Mutu adds: "I wanted to find a way to resolve and understand what was happening to me and other people who come to the United States and who cross borders. Norton explains that Mutu first created such a wall in 2004 to express her frustration while waiting to become an American citizen. When creating these works, she was focused on the Rwandan genocide.Ī nearby wall is gouged with red tinged markings so it resembles diseased or battered skin. Photo: Dario Lasagni This installation is part of the "Sleeping Heads," hung on a wall that Mutu has gouged with red tinted holes, representing her frustration with institutions. "Her interest in hybridity, animal life, biological life, microbial life - it's striking to see the work together."Ĭourtesy New Museum. "She returns and circles back to things," says curator Vivian Crockett, who curated the show with Norton. The image - inspired by a photograph from National Geographic of two dogs fighting over a scrap of meat - places the animal heads on two women's bodies, who pose like a pair of fashion models, highlighting themes that Mutu has addressed repeatedly throughout her career, such as transmutation and sexuality. The show's title takes its name from a collage that Mutu created in 2003. It's a dichotomy that is explored in the exhibition "Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined," open through June 4 and featuring more than 100 of her works created over a span of 25 years, spread across multiple floors. Born in Kenya in 1972, Mutu moved to New York in the 1990s and now splits her time between studios in Brooklyn and Nairobi. "She has talked about having multiple roots," says Margot Norton, the museum's Allen and Lola Golding senior curator. Photo: Dario Lasagni The shape of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" reminds curator Margot Norton of mangrove plants with their twisted roots.
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