wangechi mutu
Mutation and an eco-queer perspective on black femininity.
The use of collage in art is an incredibly subversive
medium. It takes images, largely ones proliferated through capitalist marketing, and transforms them into images completely divorced from the image’s original form. Wangechi Mutu, a Kenyan-born and Brooklyn-based artist, uses collages to this effect.
London’s Saatchi Gallery describes Mutu’s work as
“hybrids of multiple sources referencing the scars of cultural imposition. Placed atop medical diagrams, they feed off their cancerous classifications, directly confronting cultural preconception and bias” (Saatchigallery.com). Again the body is returned to as the vessel for how Afrosurrealists perceive attacks on blackness.
What’s notable about Mutu’s work is that, while black
woman are the focus of the work, their bodies and forms
21
