‘That Little Piece of Energy Is Magnified’: Artist Wangechi Mutu on Honoring the Spirit of the Natural World in Her Fantastical Works

0
44

Right now the New Museum has been transformed into an otherworldly scene, all thanks to Wangechi Mutu. Blending folklore and science in a striking manner, the artist’s big show gives us massive bronze sculptures of fantastical hybrid creatures astride sea creatures, surrounded by luminous works on paper depicting still more fantastical beings. It’s the first time that the museum has ever given its entire building over to a single artist. And it’s a tour-de-force for the Kenya-born Mutu.

“I’ve always been a city girl with a nature brain,” Mutu says in an exclusive interview filmed as part of Art21’s series  “I’ve always loved animals, plants, and insects.” That much is clear, considering the figures that populate her imagery: attenuated female forms with faces of leaf fronds, the beings are celestial and yet literally sculpted from the earth, and rooted in it.

In the video interview, which originally aired back in 2021, the artist traces the themes of her artistic practice, which are informed by her childhood in Africa where she attended all-girls Catholic school. At school in the 1970s and ’80s, children were taught British history, but not the traditions, heritage, or culture of their own community. “We hadn’t even looked at our own histories,” she explained. “There isn’t one particular way of seeing things. And in fact, when there is a singular voice or singular story, it tends to be domineering, problematic, and often fictional.”

When Mutu moved to New York City to pursue her art, she began working in collage, drawing on source material like fashion and wildlife magazines to anchor her own watercolors. That early work led her to study the history of photography and consider how it grew on a parallel trajectory with colonization. “The ‘other’ was photographed, and packaged, and consumed,” she argues. “Your image essentially became who you were.”

And so, Mutu began to create other, alternate identities through hybridized forms “combining humans and animals.” That notion, she says is “as old as the human mind.” Through her unique blended forms, Mutu creates a world of multiple perspectives, histories, and futures—and it’s thrilling.

 

Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s series Extended Play, below. “Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined” is on view at the New Museum in New York through June 4, 2023. 

This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of news-making artists. A new season of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series, like New York Close Up and Extended Play, and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org.

 

More Trending Stories:

Researchers in Vietnam Discovered That Two Deer Antlers Languishing in Museum Storage Are Actually 2,000-Year-Old Musical Instruments

We Asked ChatGPT About Art Theory. It Led Us Down a Rabbit Hole So Perplexing We Had to Ask Hal Foster for a Reality Check

Archaeologists Believe a Piece of Flotsam That Washed Up on a New York Beach Could be Part of an 1821 Shipwreck

A Photographer Who Found Instagram Fame for His Striking Portraits Has Confessed His Images Were Actually A.I.-Generated

After Sending ‘Girl With a Pearl Earring’ Out on Loan, the Mauritshuis Has Hung an A.I. Facsimile in Its Place. Fans Are Not Happy

Hit Mockumentary ‘Cunk on Earth’ Offers an Absurdly Comic Take on World History. Here Are 5 Things It Gets Right About Art

In Its First Major Modern and Contemporary Offering of 2023, Sotheby’s London Saw Five Artworks Sell for More Than $18 Million Each

Bought in a Thrift Store for $700, a Rare Giacometti Chandelier Just Sold at Auction for Almost $3 Million

Which A-List Art Power Couple Was Behind That Absurd, Now-Viral Ad for an Assistant? We Found Out

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here