Women's Activism NYC

Wangechi Mutu

1972 - Today

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Wangechi Mutu is a contemporary Kenyan artist noted for her work conflating gender, race, art history, and personal identity. Born on June 22, 1972, in Nairobi, Kenya, she received her bachelor's in Fine Arts from Cooper Union in 1996 and, subsequently, her master's in Fine Arts in sculpture from Yale University in 2000. Her work has been exhibited worldwide, including a major retrospective that opened in the Nasher Museum of Art in North Carolina in 2013. Her imagery has placed her work inside the realm of Afrofuturism, and her practice gives an alternate course of history for people of African descent. Mutu’s work combines a variety of source materials and textures to explore consumerism and excess. Deeply concerned with Western commercialism, Mutu has explained that “a lot of my work reflects the incredible influence that America has had on contemporary African culture. Some of it’s insidious, some of it’s innocuous, some of it’s invisible. It's there.” Her work is a focal point in the women's movement. Mutu states, “Females carry the marks, language, and nuances of their culture more than the male. Anything that is desired or despised is always placed on the female body.”

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