Wangechi Mutu
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AboutShe Walks, 2019
In her diverse practice, Wangechi Mutu reflects on sexuality, femininity, ecology, politics, the rhythms and chaos of the world and our often damaging or futile efforts to control it. At its core, her work emphasises the powerful and inescapable symbiotic connections that determine our common fate.
The artist was first recognised for paintings and collages concerned with the myriad forms of violence and misrepresentation visited upon women, especially Black women, in the contemporary world. More recently, exploring and subverting cultural preconceptions of the female body and the feminine, Mutu proposes worlds within worlds, populated by powerful hybridised female figures. Her practice has been described as engaging in her own unique form of myth-making, one in which the interweaving of fact with fiction opens up possibilities for another group of symbolic female characterisations, markedly different from those that appear in either classical history or popular culture.
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Selected Works
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BiographyShe Walks, 2019
Wangechi Mutu was born in 1972 in Nairobi, Kenya, she works in New York and Nairobi.
Recent selected solo exhibitions include Black Soil Poems, Galleria Borghese, Rome (2025); Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined, New Museum, New York (2023), travelling to New Orleans Museum of Art (2024); Wangechi Mutu, Storm King Art Center, New Windsor (2022), Wangechi Mutu: I Am Speaking, Are You Listening?, Legion of Honor, San Francisco (2021); A Promise to Communicate, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2018); and Wangechi Mutu: The End of eating Everything, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX (2018).
Recent group exhibitions include Spirit in the Land, The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Jacksonville (2024); Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists since 1940, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (2024); Blaque Orbit, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2024); Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage, First Museum of Art, Nashville (2023); A Gateway to Possible Worlds: Art & Science-fiction at Centre Pompidou-Metz, Paris (2023); Feminine power: the divine to the demonic, The British Museum, London (2022–23); In the Black Fantastic,, Hayward Gallery, London (2022); What Is Left Unspoken, Love, at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta (2022) and Prospect.5: Yesterday We Said Tomorrow, New Orleans (2021–22).
Mutu’s work is in the collections of museums including Brooklyn Art Museum, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Art, Houston; Pérez Art Museum Miami; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Tate, London.
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News
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Opening soon – Wangechi Mutu: Black Soil Poems at Galleria Borghese
June 4, 2025On view 10 June–14 September 2025, the exhibition explores the dual nature of Mutu’s practice: poetic and mythological, yet deeply connected to contemporary social and material contexts.Read More -
Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood, featuring Chantal Joffe, Wangechi Mutu, Celia Paul and Paula Rego, travels to Dundee Contemporary Arts
April 19, 2025Hayward Gallery Touring’s major group exhibition explores lived experience of motherhood through over 100 artworks. ★★★★★ Reviewing the exhibition in The Observer , Laura Cumming...Read More -
The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure, featuring Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, Wangechi Mutu and Chris Ofili, travels to Philadelphia Museum of Art
November 5, 2024Curated by Ekow Eshun and organised by the National Portrait Gallery, London, the exhibition (on view in Philadelphia 9 November 2024-9 February 2025) showcases the...Read More -
Works by Wangechi Mutu and Chris Ofili are featured in The Infinite Woman at Fondation Carmignac
April 26, 2024This group exhibition on the island of Porquerolles (until 2 November 2024), in the South of France, reflects on how women have been represented over the centuries.Read More -
Wangechi Mutu is the recipient of the Zeitz MOCAA Honorary Award for Artistic Excellence
February 11, 2024'A founding member of the Zeitz MOCAA Global Council, Mutu is one of the most esteemed and essential African artists working today. Mutu's practice has...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined at NOMA
January 30, 2024This major exhibition (31 January–14 July 2024) brings together nearly one hundred sculptures, paintings, collages, drawings, and films to present the breadth of the Kenyan–American...Read More -
Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Wangechi Mutu feature in Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
January 23, 2024On view from 18 February–12 May 2024, the first major museum exhibition devoted to exploring the breadth and complexity of Black identity and experiences in...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu: My Cave Call at Saint Louis Art Museum
January 9, 2024On view 12 January–31 March 2024, My Cave Call is a parable on wisdom seeking. Set at Mount Suswa, a holy site in Kenya, the...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu is named Apollo Artist of the Year
November 23, 2023‘I believe art is an ancient language that we use to communicate with each other into the future,’ Wangechi Mutu told the audience assembled for...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined at the New Museum is reviewed by The Wall Street Journal
March 22, 2023Featuring more than 100 works, a sprawling retrospective at the New Museum highlights the Kenyan-born artist’s stunning surrealism The subtitle of the retrospective exhibition “...Read More -
The Financial Times reviews Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined at the New Museum
March 15, 2023‘The retrospective is titled Intertwined and, sure enough, her figures are constantly putting down roots or bursting free of them, moulting and germinating in a...Read More -
Roberta Smith reviews Wangechi Mutu at the New Museum in The New York Times
March 2, 2023‘...Wangechi Mutu has turned the New Museum into a magical matriarchy. Or something close. It has become an enveloping, shadowy place shot through with flaming...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined, on view at the New Museum
February 28, 2023The New Museum presents a major solo exhibition (2 March–4 June 2023) of the work of Wangechi Mutu, bringing together over one hundred works from...Read More -
The New York Times profiles Wangechi Mutu
February 14, 2023Aruna D’Souza from The New York Times profiles Wangechi Mutu ahead of her ambitious New Musuem survey opening 2 March 2023. ‘The idea of having...Read More -
Now open – Sharjah Biennial 15, featuring work by Isaac Julien and Wangechi Mutu
February 7, 2023Conceived by the late Okwui Enwezor and curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, Director of Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present...Read More -
Works by Wangechi Mutu and Chris Ofili feature in the Hayward Gallery exhibition In the Black Fantastic
June 21, 2022Reviews for In The Black Fantastic ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ‘Unlikely to be a better show this year’ — Evening Standard ★ ★ ★...Read More -
The New York Times on Wangechi Mutu at Storm King
June 2, 2022'In a sense, making art is Mutu’s way of communicating — for her, it’s a form of meditation and prayer, a way to integrate her...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu at Storm King Art Center
May 17, 2022As part of its 2022 special exhibitions, Storm King — a 500-acre outdoor museum located in New York's Hudson Valley — presents both outdoor and...Read More -
Marina Warner reviews Feminine Power: The Divine to the Demonic for The Guardian, featuring work by Wangechi Mutu
May 16, 2022'She's a Giacometti-like female bust made of dark soil, charcoal, oyster shells, feathers, hide, china and hair. It's an alarming, secret-looking, numinous piece, and an...Read More -
As reported by The Art Newspaper, Storm King Art Center celebrates Wangechi Mutu in its 2022 season
March 17, 2022 Read More -
Cultured Magazine speaks with Wangechi Mutu
June 16, 2021Cultured Magazine talks to the artist about her current exhibition I Am Speaking, Are You Listening? at San Francisco's Legion of Honour, on view until...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu: I Am Speaking, Are You Listening? at the Legion of Honor, San Francisco
May 7, 2021Mutu's powerful exhibition (7 May–7 November 2021) at the Legion of Honor, a museum built for the showcase of European art from antiquity through Impressionism...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu and Carrie Mae Weems discuss creation myths and real-world strategies in Interview Magazine
December 7, 2020’I do believe that the most grounded, clear, and compassionate artists are always trying to find a way to communicate that same thing, to say,...Read More -
As reported by The New York Times, the Met Museum acquires two sculptures by Wangechi Mutu
July 28, 2020 Read More -
Dee Rees writes about Wangechi Mutu in The New York Times for its special feature on the African-American art shaping the 21st Century
March 19, 2020The New York Times asked 35 major African-American creators from different worlds (film, art, TV, music, books and more) to talk about the work that...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu is featured in the Centre Pompidou’s exhibition Neurones/Les Intelligences Simulées
February 24, 2020The exhibition (26 February–20 April 2020) highlights the continuity of research by artists, architects, designers and musicians alongside that developed by major scientific laboratories. Read...Read More -
Grayson Perry and Wangechi Mutu feature in Bodyscapes at The Israel Museum
February 17, 2020Examining the relationship between nature and culture through the prism of the body, this exhibition (21 February–3 October 2020) brings together historical sources and artworks...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu is featured in Indian Ocean Current: Six Artistic Narratives at McMullen Museum of Art
January 15, 2020The exhibition (27 January–31 May 2020) explores the contemporary legacy of the long movement of people, things, and ideas across the Indian Ocean. The open...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu to deliver Tang Teaching Museum’s Winter/Miller Lecture
January 10, 2020The third annual Winter/Miller Lecture (27 February 2020, 6pm) is free and open to the public. Born in Nairobi in 1972 and trained at Yale,...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu features in TIME’s 28 Outstanding Women
December 27, 2019Women everywhere pushed the world forward—and many made history, shattering long-standing glass ceilings to become 'firsts' in their fields. Wangechi Mutu First artist to display...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu is one of the FT’s Women in 2019: the game changers
December 5, 2019As her new works stand watch over the Met, the Kenyan-American sculptor talks about reshaping art history. By Annalisa Quinn In niches in front of...Read More -
A behind-the-scenes look at Ruby City
October 12, 2019A short film of Ruby City, San Antonio, Texas, featuring works by Wangechi Mutu, Do Ho Suh and interview with Isaac Julien, whose immersive video...Read More -
The Brooklyn Rail writes about Wangechi Mutu’s Met Façade Commission
October 11, 2019New York real estate is a rare and pricey commodity. Even in a space as big as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, unused corners are...Read More -
Anatomy of an Artwork: Wangechi Mutu’s She Walks in The Guardian
October 11, 2019The artist blends nature, fashion and science to create an elegant, race-spanning amalgam of femininity Walk the walk… Wangechi Mutu's 2019 figure stalks and struts,...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu and Do Ho Suh feature in Ruby City’s inaugural exhibition Waking Dream
October 7, 2019Waking Dream comprises significant works by Do Ho Suh, Leonardo Drew, Teresita Fernández, Wangechi Mutu and Cornelia Parker, as well as works by a number...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu talks to The Guardian about her Met Façade Commission
September 16, 2019Kenyan American Wangechi Mutu has become the first artist to fill Metropolitan Museum of Art’s alcoves with four eye-catching female sculptures. By Nadja Sayej If...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu: The Met Façade Commission
September 9, 2019Wangechi Mutu has created sculptures for The Met's Fifth Avenue façade niches - the first-ever such installation on the Museum's historic exterior - inaugurating a...Read More -
Ahead of her Met façade commission Wangechi Mutu is profiled by W Magazine
August 27, 2019It could be a high-concept movie: The aliens are coming, and they’ll be landing on that bastion of Western civilization, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of...Read More -
Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Wangechi Mutu feature in I Am... Contemporary Women Artists of Africa at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art
June 18, 2019Taking its name from a 1970’s feminist anthem, I Am… Contemporary Women Artists of Africa (20 June 2019–15 March 2020) draws upon a selection of...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu is featured in the 2019 Whitney Biennial
May 16, 2019The Whitney Biennial is an unmissable event for anyone interested in finding out what’s happening in art today. Curators Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockley have...Read More -
Black Refractions: Highlights from the Studio Museum in Harlem travels to The Gibbes Museum
May 1, 2019This major traveling exhibition (24 May–18 August 2019) created by the American Federation of Arts (AFA) in collaboration with The Studio Museum in Harlem features...Read More -
Black Refractions: Highlights from the Studio Museum in Harlem at the Museum of the African Diaspora
January 16, 2019This major traveling exhibition (16 January–14 April 2019) created by the American Federation of Arts (AFA) in collaboration with The Studio Museum in Harlem features...Read More -
Chantal Joffe, Wangechi Mutu and Celia Paul feature in Contemporary Dialogues with Tintoretto at the Ca’ d’Oro, Venice
October 20, 2018The exhibition (20 October 2018–7 January 2019) focuses on dialogues between Tintoretto’s masterpieces preserved at Palazzo Ducale and Galleria Giorgio Franchetti alla Ca’ d’Oro, with...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu talks to T Magazine as part of its series The Story of a Thing
June 20, 2018In this series for T, Emily Spivack, the author of “Worn Stories,” interviews creative types about their most prized possessions. The Kenyan-born, Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu and Barnaby Furnas feature in Chaos and Awe: Painting for the 21st Century, at the Frist Art Museum
June 19, 2018The exhibition (22 June – 16 September 2018) features works that induce feelings of disturbance, mystery, and expansiveness through the portrayal of forces shaping and...Read More -
Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Stan Douglas, Isaac Julien, Wangechi Mutu and Chris Ofili donate works to Creating Space: Artists for the Studio Museum in Harlem
May 10, 2018Sotheby's New York hosts the viewing (4 – 16 May 2018) and auction (16, 17 May 2018) of works to benefit the Studio Museum's new...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu in Blind Faith: Between the Visceral and the Cognitive in Contemporary Art, coming to Haus der Kunst, Munich
February 1, 20182 March – 19 August 2018 At a time when society seems to have given up believing in facts, relying on a sense of “blind...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu: A Promise to Communicate at ICA Boston
January 19, 201819 January–31 December 2018 In a new commission for the ICA, Mutu will use the rough, grey rescue blankets of humanitarian aid efforts and emergencies...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu at The Contemporary Austin
November 15, 2017A short film produced by The Contemporary Austin of Wangechi Mutu's two-venue exhibition (until 14 January 2018) See more Film ©/courtesy The Contemporary AustinRead More -
The Hirshhorn Gala honours Yayoi Kusama, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Wangechi Mutu and Sarah Sze
November 3, 2017The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden honoured four Victoria Miro artists at a gala at Lincoln Center, New York, on Monday 6 November 2017....Read More -
Wangechi Mutu takes part in Performa 17
November 3, 2017A talk and multimedia performance by Wangechi Mutu are part of the 2017 edition of Performa (1-19 November 2017). Since its inception, Performa has been...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu at The Contemporary Austin
September 23, 201723 September 2017 – 14 January 2018 She gazes east across the lagoon, looking away from the approaching viewer, her ebony skin catching the sun...Read More -
Zeitz MOCAA opens, featuring work by Isaac Julien, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Wangechi Mutu and Chris Ofili
September 22, 2017Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) collects, preserves, researches, and exhibits twenty-first century art from Africa and its Diaspora; hosts international exhibitions; develops...Read More -
Victoria Miro artists at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
June 13, 201713 June - 20 August 2017 Works by Wangechi Mutu, Varda Caivano, Secundino Hernández, Isaac Julien and Conrad Shawcross are included in the 2017 RA...Read More -
New and recent work by Wangechi Mutu coming to The Contemporary Austin
May 2, 2017An upcoming solo exhibition (23 September 2017 - 14 January 2018) takes place at The Contemporary Austin's Jones Center and an outdoor installation of Water...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu wins Anderson Ranch’s National Artist Award
April 11, 2017By Sarah Cascone Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu is being honored with the National Artist Award from the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Aspen, Colorado, to...Read More -
Jacco Olivier and Wangechi Mutu film screening at CAST, Cornwall
November 18, 2016FILM CLUB presents SURFACE Friday 9 December, 7.30pm Admission free, all welcome. The works explore various themes including sound visualisation, hand painting, abstraction, animation, video...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu in Regarding Africa: Contemporary Art and Afro-Futurism at Tel Aviv Museum of Art
November 16, 2016This large-scale group exhibition (9 December 2016 - 22 April 2017) presents art being made today in, or about, Africa, from an Afro-futurist perspective that...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu: The End of carrying All at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
November 10, 201609 NOVEMBER - 11 DECEMBER 2016 Celebrated for her recasting of African and feminist stereotypes, Wangechi Mutu draws freely upon the history of Western art...Read More -
Maria Nepomuceno, Wangechi Mutu and Celia Paul included in NO MAN’S LAND: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection at NMWA, Washington DC
November 9, 2016National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) is collaborating with the Rubell Family Collection (RFC) to realize a new vision for NO MAN’S LAND...Read More -
Just out: Protest publication
September 23, 2016This publication accompanies Protest at Victoria Miro, 23 September - 5 November 2016, an exhibition of historical and contemporary works by artists concerned with the...Read More -
Power to... the art of protest, as featured in The Observer
September 23, 2016Politically engaged art is thriving again, finding new ways to challenge in a complex digital world. We look at the rich history of protest art...Read More -
Wangechi Mutu profiled on Bloomberg Brilliant Ideas
February 12, 2016Artist Wangechi Mutu on 'Brilliant Ideas'. Wangechi Mutu explores colonial history, African politics and the worldwide fashion industry in a range of media including drawing,...Read More
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Books
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Gallery Exhibitions
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Rock My Soul
2 Oct – 2 Nov 2019 London Gallery IINew and historical works by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Sonia Boyce, Karon Davis, Zanele Muholi, Wangechi Mutu, Frida Orupabo, Howardena Pindell, Betye Saar, Khadija Saye, Tschabalala Self, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Curated by...Learn More -
Protest
23 Sep – 5 Nov 2016 London Gallery IDoug Aitken, Jules de Balincourt, Vlassis Caniaris, Elmgreen & Dragset, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Christian Holstad, Isaac Julien, Yayoi Kusama, Wangechi Mutu, Alice Neel, Chris Ofili, Richard Prince, Sarah Sze, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Kara Walker.Learn More -
Wangechi Mutu: Nguva na Nyoka
14 Oct – 19 Dec 2014 London Gallery IThe gallery's second exhibition by the artist, widely known for her elaborate collages that explore and subvert cultural preconceptions of the female body and the feminine. Mutu's practice has been...Learn More -
In the Company of Alice
22 Jun – 30 Jul 2010 London Gallery I'If you do not solve your painting problem in painting human beings, you do not solve it at all'. Gertrude Stein Hernan Bas, John Currin, Verne Dawson, Peter Doig, Marlene...Learn More -
Wangechi Mutu: Yo.n.I
24 Nov 2007 – 19 Jan 2008 London Gallery IOne of a new generation of prominent female artists, Wangechi Mutu first came to attention in 2000 with her pin-up drawings and elaborate figurative collages. Mutu's aesthetic employs an economy...Learn More
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