Wangechi Mutu’s fantastical creatures take over the New Museum
Wangechi Mutu’s ‘Intertwined' at the New Museum, NYC, until 4 June 2023, is a major survey spanning the full breadth of the Kenyan-born American artist’s work
The full breadth of Wangechi Mutu’s artistic practice is being celebrated at a major solo exhibition at the New Museum in New York City. Comprised of over 100 works that range from painting and sculpture to collage, drawing and film, ‘Intertwined’ tracks the progression of Mutu’s practice since the mid-1990s and takes over the lobby and all three floors of the Sanaa-designed building. In addition to a ‘Screens Series’ programme of video works in the museum’s lower level, a new street-facing commission – a vinyl work inspired by an earlier collage, Sick Planets (2007-13) – also occupies the building’s glass façade during this New York art exhibition.
‘One of the goals of this exhibition is to emphasise how Mutu translates themes and revisits ideas across media, and how this continues to be an important aspect of her practice,’ says curator Vivian Crockett, who worked with senior curator Margot Norton and curatorial assistant Ian Wallace on the show. ‘For example, we can see related concerns about mass consumerism and its uneven consequences in earlier collage-based works like This you call Civilization? (2008) appearing again in the video work, The End of carrying All (2015).’
She continues, ‘The title “Intertwined” also emphasises the interconnection between themes, strategies and materials throughout Mutu’s career. Because Mutu is an artist who has consistently expanded her practice and who is so prolific across media, we wanted to make the connection between the different aspects and so-called periods of her practice clear. The show places work from different moments in conversation together, as with Mutu’s Histology of the Different Classes of Uterine Tumors (2006) shown alongside her more recent Virus series (2017-2022).’
First known for her collage-based works from the late 1990s that explore the themes of camouflage and transformation, Mutu’s embrace of different visual mediums has seen her hybridised, fantastical forms drawn from folklore, myth and fable, take on a multilayered of their own. Steeped in socio-historical references, a by-product of her anthropological studies, and her own experiences of living and working between Nairobi and New York, Mutu’s practice has consistently challenged the ways that cultures and histories have been classified.
‘Wangechi’s work has consistently emphasised how the legacies of colonialism, imperialism and their impacts on women manifest at various contemporary junctures. She has also consistently drawn parallels between historical traumas and the hyper-sexualisation of women more broadly – and often specifically Black women and women from the African continent – by highlighting the way media has normalised and desensitised us to both,’ Crockett says. ‘At the same time, in bringing to life otherworldly realities that disrupt and counteract historical and contemporary modes of oppression and exclusion, she presents us with a vision of a more equitable world and invites us to consider how we can make gradual but impactful moves in the present towards these goals.’
The most complete survey of Mutu’s work to date, ‘Intertwined’ is organised in a loose chronology, ‘to give visitors a general sense of shifts in Mutu’s practice. Each floor has its own distinct mood and emphasizes different aspects of her practice,’ explains Crockett. ‘The second floor highlights Mutu’s early work in mixed-media collage as they shift in scale and approach, including early commissions for NY- based institutions like the New Museum and The Studio Museum in Harlem, alongside sculptures ranging from her Cooper Union period to more recent ones dating to 2022. The third-floor places greater emphasis on her interest in and use of natural materials, marked most prominently by her return to Nairobi in 2015 [and] the fourth-floor centres Mutu’s work in bronze, paired with her most recent large-scale collages.’
With her most significant and monumental undertakings, lesser-known projects, and early works that have rarely been seen, ‘Intertwined’ offers an unprecedented in-depth look at the progression of Mutu’s practice over the last 25 years.
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
‘Intertwined’ by Wangechi Mutu, until 4 June 2023. newmuseum.org
Pei-Ru Keh is a former US Editor at Wallpaper*. Born and raised in Singapore, she has been a New Yorker since 2013. Pei-Ru held various titles at Wallpaper* between 2007 and 2023. She reports on design, tech, art, architecture, fashion, beauty and lifestyle happenings in the United States, both in print and digitally. Pei-Ru took a key role in championing diversity and representation within Wallpaper's content pillars, actively seeking out stories that reflect a wide range of perspectives. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children, and is currently learning how to drive.
-
We make off with a MOKE and experience the cult EV on the sunny backroads of Surrey
MOKE is a cult car with a bright future. Wallpaper* sat down with the company's new CEO Nick English to discuss his future plans for this very British beach machine
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
A walk through Potsdamer Platz: Europe’s biggest construction site 30 years on
In 2024, Potsdamer Platz celebrates its 30th anniversary and Jonathan Glancey reflects upon the famous postmodernist development in Berlin, seen here through the lens of photographer Rory Gardiner
By Jonathan Glancey Published
-
India Mahdavi designs Acqua di Parma’s 2024 holiday collection using colourful Murano glass
India Mahdavi has teamed up with Acqua di Parma to create its 2024 holiday collection, a series of colourful fragrance bottles and home objects crafted from Murano glass
By Hannah Tindle Published
-
Brutalism in film: the beautiful house that forms the backdrop to The Room Next Door
The Room Next Door's production designer discusses mood-boarding and scene-setting for a moving film about friendship, fragility and the final curtain
By Anne Soward Published
-
'There’s an anxiety under all of it': Violet Dennison in New York
Violet Dennison debuts abstract paintings with new show 'Damaged Self' at Tara Downs Gallery
By Mary Cleary Published
-
Mark Armijo McKnight’s bodily landscapes capture the tactile serenity of the American West
The artist’s new exhibition at the Whitney Museum, which is organised by the museum curator Drew Sawyer, offers a succinct window into his contemplative suggestion of queering a landscape
By Osman Can Yerebakan Published
-
Dark, glamorous and hedonistic: a photography book captures New York in the 1990s
New York: High Life, Low Life, by Dafydd Jones, goes behind the scenes of New York society
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Derrick Alexis Coard’s portraits are a sensitive, positive testimony to Black men
The late artist Derrick Alexis Coard’s retrospective ‘I Am That I Am’, at New York’s Salon 94, honours his ‘symbolic expression for possible change for the African-American male community’
By Tianna Williams Published
-
Nona Faustine confronts the past in New York
Artist Nona Faustine reframes New York's colonial past in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Casa Bosques’ queer-themed book curation comes to New York’s East Village
In Pride Month 2024, Casa Bosques’ pop-up bookstore in The Standard hotel, East Village, offers a stylish haven for literary mavens
By Hannah Silver Published
-
‘Very few museums were interested in my work until recently’: Amalia Mesa-Bains on her first-ever retrospective
‘Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory’ is a long-overdue exhibition at El Museo del Barrio in New York celebrating five decades of the trailblazing Chicanx artist
By Sofia de la Cruz Published