New Work: Wangechi Mutu
|
July 22 - October 9, 2005 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. |
 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. |
