User:Anya.St.Z/Wangechi Mutu

Art
Mutu's work crosses a variety of mediums, including collage, bricolage, video, performance, and sculpture, and investigates themes of gender, race, and colonialism. These mediums, many of which involve the mixing of materials, sources, and imagery, are more than just formal choices--they hint towards foundational themes of resilience and regeneration that appears throughout her oeuvre.

Mutu's work, in part, centers on the violence and misrepresentation experienced by Black women in contemporary society. A recurring theme of Mutu's work is her various depictions of femininity. Mutu uses the feminine subject in her art, even when the figures are more or less unrecognizable, whether by using the form itself or the texture and patterns the figure is made from. Sometimes she uses cliche images of archetypal women -- mothers, virgins, goddesses -- as source material, reconfiguring them to create potent, charged images that reflect her own emotional agency, as well as the agency, multitudes, and contradictions of womanhood in general. Her use of otherworldly depictions for women, many times shown in a seemingly sexual or sensual pose, brings about discussion of the objectification of women. Specifically, Mutu addresses the hyper-objectification of black female bodies and has used an otherworldly nature to reiterate the fictitious nature of society's depictions of black women. '''Mutu uses female subjectivity to examine other social and political issues as well; however, her aim is to always retain focus on female figures, identities, and experiences, in order to bring them to the forefront. (2)'''

Whether through delicate lined patterns or familiar feminine builds, Mutu's various ways of representing feminine qualities is said to enhance the strength of the images or the significance of the issues presented. Many of Mutu's artworks are known to be interpreted in contradictory ways, both seen as complicit to problematic society and as hopeful for future change in society. It's also been said that Mutu's use of such intentionally repulsive or otherworldly imagery may help women to step away from society's ideas of perfection and instead embrace their own imperfections and become more accepting of the flaws of others as well. '''Although her imagery of female figures has often been described as "grotesque", she claims they are instead "disabled", displaying a manifestation of historical and societal tensions present in black women's identities. In these mangled forms, the struggle of women forced to comply with social expectations and historical oppressions are given physical form, portraying distinct inner turmoil. (1)'''

'''Much of this is accomplished through her use of mixed media, which allows for her to unmake and reimagine bodies through modes of collage. (1)''' In her Sentinel series, she creates regal and fierce abstract female forms made from clay, wood and various found materials.

In an interview with the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia curator, Rachel Kent, she states, "I try to stretch my own ideas about appropriate ways to depict women. Criticism, curiosity, and voyeurism lead me along, as I look at things I find hard to view – things that are sometimes distasteful or unethical". Mutu frequently uses "grotesque" textures in her artwork and has cited her mother's medical books on tropical diseases as an inspiration, stating that there is "nothing more insanely visually interesting and repulsive than a body infected with tropical disease; these are diseases that grow and fester and become larger than the being that they have infected, almost."

Mutu is able to enact personal and cultural transfigurations by transitioning from painting to sculpture and back again. Mutu says "This transition was so powerful because I used my mind as an object maker – I think I always painted like a sculptor." In Mutu's collage work she began to respond to Western advertisement and beauty standards: "I began an ongoing critique and an intellectual an actual vandalization of those images, which were violating me by rendering me invisible."

'''The themes and narratives of Mutu's work create a visual representation of certain social, political, and physical realities of the world today. This includes issues of feminism, racism, the environment, and the effects of colonialism and rebuilding post-colonialism. Mutu's visual arts deliberately reject colonial political and social constructs regarding these issues, instead deliberately examining them through the lens of the identities of black women. As a result, she is able to generate unique perspectives by under-represented identities, thus broadening and improving discourse surrounding certain issues, while also recognizing and emphasizing the importance of these women and their experiences. (2)'''

In her art, Mutu presents complex narratives of mental anguish and, in many ways, crises of identity. '''Her material transformations of the human body imply a theoretical layer, where psychological aspects of African experience can be represented. Mutu views her own art as a form of self-reflection, and as a way to process her own identity being boiled down to "black" as an African woman in America. Furthermore, she uses her art as a way to examine how African identities and experiences on the whole are oversimplified in western discourse, bringing the reality of the intricacies of feminism and colonialism to the forefront through the aesthetics of collage, mixed media art, and Afrofuturism. (1)'''

Influence of Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism
Mutu's work has been called "firmly Africanfuturist and Afrofuturist", as exemplified in her work, including one of her pieces titled The End of Eating Everything (2013). In her 2013–2014 installation at the Brooklyn Museum, the curatorial placard accompanying her work A'gave described Afrofuturism as "an aesthetic that uses the imaginative strategies of science fiction to envision alternate realities for Africa and people of African descent". For critics, Mutu's imagined alternate realities for Africa through the medium of science fiction definitively situated Mutu in the genre of Afrofuturism. Specific elements of Mutu's art that situate her within this genre include her amalgamations of humans and machines, or cyborgs, within collages such as Family Tree as well as the film The End of Eating Everything.

Additionally, Mutu's work consistently involves intentional re-imaginations of the African experience. In Misguided Little Unforgivable Hierarchies, she examines social hierarchy and power relationships through the medium of collage, for "rankings of peoples have historically been constructed around fabricated racial and ethnic categories". In Family Tree, as in many of her works, Mutu deliberately constructs both a past and a future within the single figure through displaying diagrams from antique medical journals as well as mechanical images. '''Mutu uses Afrofuturism to explore themes of alienation, which relates to feminism, colonialism, materiality, and disability. In this way, Afrofuturism acts as a lens for these subjects. The use of Afrofuturistic aesthetics also allows for creative freedom in rendering bodies and representations of identities and experiences, as can be seen with the presence of cyborgs and alien-like figures in her works. (1)'''

'''The presence of black women in a futuristic setting also acts as a pushback to ideas of evolutionism and cultural and social hierarchies. By contextualizing these women in such extreme modern spaces, Mutu makes a statement -- that women of color are included in the idea of the idealistic "evolved" human. This rejects colonialist ideas about people of color being "less evolved", or modernist ideas about people of color being stuck in a less developed state. (2)'''

'''In the goal of creating distinct representations of struggles and tensions for black identities, the principles and aesthetics of Afrofuturism work well with Mutu's use of collage and mixed media art. These elements form a more holistic approach to examining fractured identities. (1)'''