I have long admired and taught Wengechi Mutu's mixed media collages in my Painting and Drawing classes, so when the New Museum show Wengechi Mutu Intertwined opened, I was excited to see it. On Wednesday, May 30 TTs co-founder cella and I went to the New Museum and took in Wengchi Mutu: Intertwined, which we found breathtakingly beautiful. Then the next evening, my bff Barbara Verrochi and I attended Mutu's "In Conversation with the show's curators, which was also good.
"...it’s the collages of the mid-2000s that made Mutu famous, and it’s the collages many viewers will be here to see.
Some of the most provocative ones feature pornographic images of Black women. Her “MUD” works (2003) turn these sexualized pictures, in which little is left to the imagination, into something a lot more mysterious, with splotches of dried brown grime covering the more revealing bits. In one, a mass of filth appears to pour forth from one woman’s genitals, hiding nearly all but one leg with a strappy high-heeled shoe on its foot.
The “MUD” works prove so striking because they undermine the piercing male gaze that has historically been cast upon models like these. Later collages grew in scale and ambition, and furthered that theme, similarly enlisting grotesquerie as a means of empowerment."
See the complete ArtNews review here:
Wangechi Mutu’s Excellent New Museum Survey Transports Viewers to Other Worlds
