From her Nairobi studio, artist Wangechi Mutu considers her relationship with the natural world and the ways in which it has influenced her variegated artistic practice. A self-described “city girl with a nature brain,” Mutu recounts her upbringing in Kenya, memories of playing in her family’s garden, and attending an all-girls Catholic school. These experiences instilled a profound respect for both nature and the feminine in Mutu, alongside a curiosity about the African history, heritage, and culture that was omitted from her studies. Today, Mutu’s monumental sculptures of hybrid female, animal, and plant forms assert “how incredibly important every single plant and animal and human is in keeping us all alive and afloat.”
Wangechi Mutu: Between the Earth and the Sky [Vimeo, 14:42]
Via Colossal, which additionally notes:
Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu made history in 2019 when her four bronze sculptures became the first ever to occupy the niches of the Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s facade. Stretching nearly seven feet, the seated quartet evokes images of heavily adorned African queens and intervenes in the otherwise homogenous canons of art history held within the institution’s walls.
The monumental figures are one facet of Mutu’s nuanced body of work that broadly challenges colonialist, racist, and sexist ideologies. Now on view at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor is the latest iteration of the artist’s subversive projects: I Am Speaking, Are You Listening? disperses imposing hybrid creatures in bronze and towering sculptures made of soil, branches, charcoal, cowrie shells, and other organic materials throughout the neoclassical galleries. The figurative works draw a direct connection between the Black female body and ecological devastation as they reject the long-held ideals elevated in the space.
Wangechi Mutu on Artsy | Instagram