Wangechi Mutu
Born 1972, Nairobi, Kenya
1996 BFA Cooper Union for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences, New York
2000 MFA Yale University, School of Art, New Haven
Selected museum exhibitions: The Contemporary Austin, Texas (2017); SITE Santa Fe (2016); Il Capricorno, Venice, Italy (2015); Brooklyn Museum (2013); Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (2012); Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2009); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, New York (2005); Johannesburg Biennale (1997)
Selected honors: Asher B. Durand Artist of the Year Award, Brooklyn Museum (2013); Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year Award (2010); The Louis Comfort Tiffany Award (2008); The Joan Mitchell Foundation (2007); Studio Museum in Harlem Artist in Residence (2003); Richard Leakey Merit Award, Nairobi (1994)
Selected public collections Art Gallery of Ontario; American Federation of the Arts, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art; New Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art.
In her collages, films, sculptures, installations, and performance Wangechi Mutu channels her concerns with femininity, sexuality, ethnicity, ecology, and politics. Her polymorphic forms address cultural perceptions of the female body and the oppression of women. As Mutu stated: “I was always interested in the power of the body, both as an image and as an actual mechanism through which we exist and find out who we are. I was interested in what goes on inside, but also what people see you as. I was also looking at the history of the body, questioning issues of representation and perception.” In Cact Us, 2008, botanical forms are mixed with elements of human anatomy to create hybrid forms that reconfigure the female body in an uncanny fashion.