Kenyan-born multi-media artist Wangechi Mutu is renowned for creating work that examines the oppression and violence inflicted against women in the modern day. Her work has been exhibited in a number of international institutions, and her latest offering will be exhibited at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.
Titled A Fantastic Journey, the exhibition presents 50 different installations by Mutu ranging from the mid-1990s to now. From her iconic collages to rarely seen work and all-new collections, highlights of the exhibit include Mutu’s first animated video and a wall drawing which allows visitors to submerge themselves in her work.
‘We are very proud to present Wangechi Mutu’s most innovative and exhilarating work,’ curator Trevor Schoonmaker said in a press release. ‘Followers of Mutu’s work will be amazed by her new ideas and creations, and will gain unprecedented insight into her artistic process and evolution as an artist over the past 15 years. Her work is as seductive and beautiful as it is critical and disturbing.’
One of her most famous installations is titled Suspended Playtime and consists of plastic shopping bags positioned to resemble stone and suspended from the ceiling while accompanying video Eat Cake depicts an artist devouring a three-layer cake.
‘There are things that I do that are often mysterious to me,’ Mutu told Indy Week. ‘I have a lot of respect for intuition and a process-oriented approach to the work. I mean, I have specific, concrete ideas often, but if things guide me I don’t try to question too much the logic or lack of logic in what I’m doing.’
Mutu’s famous collages featuring the figures of women with severed limbs are also on display, making use of beads, paint and magazine cutouts from a variety of sources including fashion magazines and science fiction works.
‘I think we are really overconfident about assigning gender specificity based on biology and physical appearance and also based on whatever religious, traditional or cultural biases we have about what is female, what is male,’ Mutu said.
‘In this kind of mythological fantasy world, the idea is to imagine that if femaleness is the burden that you are given, what would you transform into?’
The entire exhibition is a work of art in itself, set up to mimic a forest environment which is particularly fitting for an installation which resembles a tree with giant roots.
Born in 1972, Mutu studied in Britain and the US before relocating permanently to Brooklyn. Apart from her exploration of female identity, Mutu is also known for making references to colonial history, African politics and the fashion industry through her work.
The exhibition was devised earlier this month and will remain at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University until 21 July. It will then travel to the Brooklyn Museum of Art in September 2013, the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami in April 2014 and the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University in September 2014.
