On view 10 June–14 September 2025, the exhibition, conceived as a site-specific intervention, unfolds throughout the museum’s interior galleries, its façade, and the Secret Gardens. It challenges classical tradition through suspensions, fragmented forms, and newly imagined mythologies, establishing a multilayered dialogue between the artist’s contemporary language and the symbolic institutional authority.
The title evokes the dual nature of Mutu’s practice: poetic and mythological, yet deeply connected to contemporary social and material contexts. 'Black soil' — rich and malleable under the rain, almost like clay — appears across multiple geographies, including the Secret Gardens of the Galleria Borghese, which resonate with the artist’s imagination. From this soil, the sculptures seem to emerge, as if molded by a primordial force, giving shape to stories, myths, memories, and poems. The metaphor underscores the generative and transformative power of her work: rooted in materiality, yet open to multiple future interpretations.
Image: Wangechi Mutu, Suspended Playtime, 2012
Garbage bags and twine
Dimensions variable
Installation view at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany
Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery
