The first monograph on the work of celebrated and influential Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu

Wangechi Mutu's remarkable body of work touches on such issues as sexuality, ecology, politics, and the rhythms and chaos that govern the world. Her paintings, sculptures, and collages, often enriched with culturally-charged materials including tea, synthetic hair, Kenyan soil, feathers, and sand, interweave fact with fiction, generating a unique form of myth-making that sets her apart from classical history or popular culture. This is the first book to document her evolution and explore her impact.

About the Authors:

Adrienne Edwards is Curator of Performance at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Courtney J. Martin is Director of the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven.

Kellie Jones is Hans Hofmann Professor of Modern Art in the Departments of Art History & Archaeology, and African American & African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University.

Chika Okeke-Agulu is Director of African Studies at Princeton University, New Jersey.

Between Afrofuturism, fantasy and postcolonialism: the most comprehensive monograph to date on the fantastical worlds of Wangechi Mutu

Wangechi Mutu takes viewers on journeys of material, psychological and sociopolitical transformation; this volume explores her most recent groundbreaking work. Over the past two decades, Mutu has created chimerical constellations of powerful female characters, hybrid beings and fantastical landscapes. With a rare understanding of the need for powerful new mythologies beyond simple binaries and stereotypes, Mutu breaches common distinctions between human, animal, plant and machine. An artist who calls both Nairobi and New York City home, Mutu moves voraciously between cultural traditions to challenge colonialist, racist and sexist worldviews with her visionary projection of an alternate universe informed by Afrofuturism, posthumanism and feminism.

This dazzling book accompanies a presentation of Mutu’s new work on view at the Legion, along with a greater selection from her landmark oeuvre. It is the most comprehensive book on the artist to date.

A comprehensive survey of the work of the influential Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu

Wangechi Mutu’s multidisciplinary practice grapples with contemporary realities while proffering new models for a radically changed future informed by feminism, Afrofuturism, and interspecies symbiosis. Her work addresses some of today's most critical questions concerning historical violence and its impact on women, together with our inextricable ties toward one another, our ecosystems, and other life forms.

Accompanying a major solo exhibition at the New Museum opening in February 2023, this expansive survey will trace the entirety of Mutu’s influential career chronologically, from early sculptural works of the late 1990s to her collage works of the early 2000s and more recent video works, large-scale sculptures, and site-specific interventions.

This monograph provides the opportunity to see thematic through-lines and progressions across the entire arc of Mutu's career to date. Her sculptures inaugurated the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Façade Project, and her work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Tate Modern, London, among other major institutions. 

About the Authors:

Margot Norton is Allen and Lola Goldring Senior Curator at the New Museum.

Vivian Crockett is Curator at the New Museum.