This richly illustrated full-color catalog accompanies the first major solo museum exhibition and most comprehensive survey of the artist Wangechi Mutu's work, on view at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University from March 21, 2013, through July 21, 2013, before traveling to the Brooklyn Museum. Born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1972, and now based in Brooklyn, Mutu renders the complex global sensibility of the early twenty-first century through a distinctly hybrid aesthetic. She combines found materials and magazine cutouts with sculpture and painted imagery, sampling from sources and phenomena as diverse as African traditions, international politics, the fashion industry, and science fiction. In her work, Mutu marries poetic symbolism with sociopolitical critique to explore issues of gender, race, war, colonialism, and, particularly, the exoticization of the black female body.
The many images included in Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey highlight the most important and iconic works that Mutu has created since the mid-1990s, as well as portray new collages, drawings, videos, and site-specific installations. The catalog also offers an intimate look into her sketchbooks and includes an interview with the artist conducted by the exhibition's curator, Trevor Schoonmaker. Essays by Schoonmaker, the art historian Kristine Stiles, and the critic, musician, and producer Greg Tate are paired with an illustrated chronology of Mutu's work.
Publication of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
