Wangechi Mutu was born in Nairobi, Kenya on the 22nd June 1974, which makes her 46 years of age. Mutu is an international's contemporary visual artist known for her painting, sculpture film and performance work. Mutu studied at the University of Yale School of Arts (graduated in the year 2000), and she currently lives and works in New York. Her most recent solo exhibition (2018) was at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Boston MA "A Promise to Communicate". Her most recent group exhibition wAS in 2019, “The End of Eating Everything”, Weatherspoon Art Museum UNC, GREENSBORO, NC. Mutu is inspired by representing the female body through painting, immersive installations and live and video performances all the while exploring questions of self-image, gender constructs, cultural trauma and environmental destruction.
'Cancer of the Uterus"
'Cancer of the Uterus' was created in 2005, on medical paper 46x31cm, this art piece has a mixed range of mediums within it; glitter, fur, and collage.
Wangechi Mutu focuses on Ancient and Futuristic elements, "her figures aspire as a super-race, by-products of troubled and imposed evolution" Saatchigallery.com. In this art piece, the figure is an ominous goddess, her portrait seemed to diseased at the core which could be referring to cancer. Mutu uses mediums within her artwork which is a reference of her African heritage/identity, and political strife. she uses the black glitter in this art piece to show the abyss of western desire due to illegal diamond trade and its consequences of war and oppression. "From corruption and violence, Mutu creates a glamorous beauty; her figures empowered by their survivalist adjustment to atrocity, made immune and ‘improved’ by horror and being victims."(Saatchigallery.com). Mutu has used the colours pink, black and beige throughout this art piece, these colours have. many connotations and meaning which could alter the interpretation of this art piece. According to https://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/color-pink.html, Pink is feminine and romantic, affectionate and intimate, thoughtful and caring. It tones down the physical passion of red replacing it with gentle loving energy. According to https://www.bourncreative.com/meaning-of-the-color-black/, Black is associated with power, fear, mystery, strength, authority, elegance, formality, death, evil, and aggression, authority, rebellion, and sophistication. Black is required for all other colours to have depth and variation of hue. when I think of the beige colour I think of skin, which in this art piece skin is being explored as its the female body, it can also be deemed in a sexual way too.
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