WANGECHI MUTU (b. 1972, Nairobi, Kenya) lives and works in New York.
Wangechi Mutu first came to attention in 2000 with her pin-up drawings and elaborate figurative collages. Mutu's aesthetic employs an economy of surface and depth to engage in her own unique form of myth making. The artist manipulates ink and acrylic paint into pools of color, and then carefully applies imagery sampled from disparate sources, including medical diagrams, fashion magazines, anthropology and botany texts, pornography, and traditional African arts. In recent years she has begun to explore applying her method onto other media, such as sculpture.
Mutu’s work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY (2007); SITE Santa Fe (2006-2007); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA (2005), and most recently at the New Museum for Contemporary Art, New York and the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens.
Mutu is represented by Sikkema Jenkins & Co in New York.