Exhibition view: Wangechi Mutu, Intertwined, New Museum, New York (2 March–4 June 2023). Courtesy Ocula. Photo: Charles Roussel.
Exhibition view: Wangechi Mutu, Intertwined, New Museum, New York (2 March–4 June 2023). Courtesy Ocula. Photo: Charles Roussel.
Exhibition view: Wangechi Mutu, Intertwined, New Museum, New York (2 March–4 June 2023). Courtesy Ocula. Photo: Charles Roussel.
Exhibition view: Wangechi Mutu, Intertwined, New Museum, New York (2 March–4 June 2023). Courtesy Ocula. Photo: Charles Roussel.
Wangechi Mutu, Crocodylus (2020). Bronze. 424.18 x 220.98 x 185.42 cm. Exhibition view: Intertwined, New Museum, New York (2 March–4 June 2023). Courtesy Ocula. Photo: Charles Roussel.
Wangechi Mutu, In Two Canoe (2022). Bronze. 457.2 x 172.7 x 182.9 cm. Exhibition view: Intertwined, New Museum, New York (2 March–4 June 2023). Courtesy Ocula. Photo: Charles Roussel.
Wangechi Mutu, Yo Mama (2003). Ink, mica flakes, acrylic, pressure-sensitive film, cut-and-pasted printed paper, and painted paper on paper, diptych. 150.2 x 215.9 cm. Courtesy the artist and Vielmetter, Los Angeles. Photo: Robert Edemeyer.
Wangechi Mutu, People in Glass Towers Should Not Imagine Us (2003). Mixed media collage on paper, diptych. 355.6 x 259.1 cm. Courtesy the artist and Collection Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn and Nicolas Rohatyn, New York.
Wangechi Mutu, Subterranea Holy Cow (2022). Ink, emulsion paint, and watercolor paper on photographic print. 184.8 x 121.6 cm. Courtesy Wangechi Mutu.
Wangechi Mutu‘s mysterious narratives are fantastical and complex.
In her most complete survey to date, Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined (2 March–4 June 2023), the Kenyan artist presents over 100 works that span Mutu’s 25 year career in a display that takes over the entirety of the New Museum in New York.
Mutu’s complex body of work is often infused with imagery that investigates the different cultural preconceptions put upon contemporary structures and bodies, particularly Black women.
In Subterranea Holy Cow (2022), Mutu explores the possibilities of figuration. Depicting a hybridised body—part human, part cow—Mutu’s fantastical figure morphs from human, to animal, to a blooming membrane, spreading its veins like roots across the earthy subterranea.
Unfurling the artist’s imagining of ‘a radically changed future’, Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined offers a rare occasion to grasp the arc of Mutu’s ambitious career.
Main image: Wangechi Mutu, Subterranea Holy Cow (2022) (detail). Ink, emulsion paint, and watercolor paper on photographic print. 184.8 x 121.6 cm. Courtesy Wangechi Mutu.
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