Wangechi Mutu Histology of the Different Classes of Uterine Tumors 2004 - 2005 © Wangechi Mutu

Biography

Born 1972
Nationality American
Birth place Kenya

Wangechi Mutu's self-reflection through the use of figuration, as well as her experiments with various materials, has remained consistent throughout her practice. In her work, the female body has been the primary map to understanding the most personal as well as the most universal existential questions about identity, race, living in our bodies, and experiences related to being human. Using a variety of media including performance, painting, collage, sculpture, installation and video she has continued making objects and painting in order to understand and to question our shared humanness, our shared femaleness, our traumas and our common origins. With her characteristic morphing, hybrid, and organic forms, she portrays alienation as a shared experience and our need for mythologisation and image-creation as a means of representing ourselves and our consciousness. In Mutu’s work she shows how our identity has a discernible, performative quality and she invents characters to rewrite and reimagine herself and others; breaking and recreating restrictive man-made codes that are often at odds with our perception of ourselves. She has participated in several major solo exhibitions in institutions worldwide including at The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Façade Commission: Wangechi Mutu, The NewOnes, will free Us and at The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Legion of Honor Museum Wangechi Mutu: I Am Speaking, Are You listening?. Mutu works in New York and Nairobi.