Wangechi Mutu
July 22 – October 9, 2005
New York Gallery
Wangechi Mutu was born and raised in Kenya
and came to the United States in the mid-1990s. She is known
for hallucinatory images in which she combines collage and
ink drawing to create flamboyantly distorted figures that reflect
contemporary society’s obsession with physical appearance.
Her elegantly grotesque figures are assembled with surgical
precision from images clipped from sources as diverse as glamour
magazines, National
Geographic publications, coffee table books on “classical” African
art, wildlife journals, and motorcycle magazines. Mutu mixes
these fragments with hand-rendered colored ink passages that
recall everything from body wounds to elaborately patterned
fabrics. Mutu’s Miami exhibition, Amazing
Grace, is an extended meditation on the slave trade
and the travails of displaced populations in South Florida
and elsewhere.
|
Wangechi Mutu, You
tried so hard to make us away 2005
Ink, acrylic, glitter, fur, contact paper and collage on Mylar
88 x 51-1/4 inches
Courtesy of Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles,
and Brent Sikkema Gallery, New York
Wangechi Mutu is part of MAM’s New Work series, dedicated to projects by leading contemporary artists. It is supported in part by the Peter Norton Family Foundation and the Funding Arts Network. Curated by MAM Assistant Director for Programs/Senior Curator Peter Boswell.
|
