Cut-out images of a dark skinned animal eye and a pair of pouting pink human lips are pasted onto an image of a pale pink, pearly seashell. A bird wing protrudes from the back of the creature’s seashell head, which rests on a neck composed of unrecognizable mechanical parts and wires. . . Such is a beginning description of a typical collage created by Wangechi Mutu (Family Tree series). Mutu works with many mediums ranging from sculpture to film, but she is most famous for her collage pieces which usually depict surreal female figures composed of a patchwork of images of living and non-living things.

While this description may lead one to believe that Mutu’s pieces are nonsensical, her works are anything but. Instead, they fit into the realm of contemporary art, always focused on addressing big ideas and influencing the thought processes of viewers. Mutu best expressed this goal when she said, “Art allows you to imbue the truth with some sort of magic so it can infiltrate the psyches of more people, including those who don’t believe the same things as you” (Thornton 59).

Mutu mainly aims to change viewer’s perspectives through using her subjects to critique social power structures such as white supremacy and patriarchy. Her collage subjects usually belong to one or more marginalized groups, often black and almost always women, and she arranges them strategically to exaggerate or caricaturize existing stereotypes of these groups. Most of the concepts Mutu addresses can be directly linked to her own unique life experiences as a Kenyan-born immigrant navigating racism and sexism in the United States. Through her collage compositions, Wangechi Mutu works to subvert social hierarchies through caricaturized imitation, exploring themes such as displacement, colonialism, and female subjugation–an approach informed by her life experiences and educational background.

Displacement

Mutu has drawn much artistic inspiration from her experiences as a Kenyan immigrant in the U.S., often conveying conflicted feelings of displacement in her work. In many of her interviews, Mutu references a friction in being from Kenya, a society in which the majority of citizens are black, and moving to the U.S., where she finds herself a minority. Mutu’s struggles with displacement have led her to create collage figures that appear disjointed and fractured while also possessing an African air, calling attention to unfair stereotypes about the continent in the process. She confirmed themes of displacement that are present in her collages in an interview in 2013, stating that “Displacement anxiety and a fractured identity are implied in my drawings; there are mutilations and awkward attachments in my collage work.” (Farrell 142). On commenting on the stereotypes that are present in her work, Mutu said “I mine stereotypes for their weak foundations and produce figures that are distillations of my own issues, beliefs, perceptions, and personal stereotypes.”

“. . . I mine stereotypes for their weak foundations and produce figures that are distillations of my own issues, beliefs, perceptions, and personal stereotypes.”Wangechi Mutu

One collage of Mutu’s in which this technique is evident is in her 2013 piece “Second Born” (shown below). The unfamiliar and disjointed features Mutu describes as being common in her work are quite visible in this piece. The main figure is human-like, relying on biomorphic shape and containing snippets of human eyes and lips, but it is also eerily unlike any human that exists in reality. The figure’s skin is multicolored and dingy in appearance and its body is twisted in an unnatural way. A yellow hissing snake head is attached to the end of the figure’s head, which is oblong and pointy. Even the landscape is completely unfamiliar, featuring jutting spiky hills and tall, scraggly plant-life that appears to have flames engulfing the tips. Within this uncomfortable foreignness, however, are recognizable traits of a figure that is both female and black, most likely African.

While the distorted figure is clearly not representational of real African people, the traits that stand out to make this strange figure recognizable are largely African stereotypes. The figure’s left arm curls around a featureless baby in a distorted fashion, perhaps drawing upon racist stereotypes of black women as unsupportive mothers. The woman herself is also extremely thin, with limbs that appear almost shriveled, perhaps satirizing the stereotype of African people as starving. The yellow snake head which shoots off of the back of the subject’s head is also a clear attempt to mock Western framing of Africa as a land of safaris and exotic animals. Mutu has been known to utilize images found in travel and wild-life magazines, many of them African-focused, in order to draw upon and twist Western stereotypes of “wild” Africa and its people. (Farrell 140). Mutu seems to be addressing and mocking these stereotypes through this collage by placing them front and center in an otherwise unrecognizable creature.

In terms of the stylistic qualities of Second Born, Mutu focuses quite heavily on ensuring the piece has texture. While Mutu’s pieces have thus been described as “collages,” these compositions are actually more accurately described as “Papier Colle” because they mainly use paper to create implied texture. Collages play with texture by incorporating actual textures in the form of objects such as fabric, rope, and thread to the composition. This piece specifically, has only trace elements of Papier Colle, but does contain interesting simulated texture thanks to Mutu’s precise drawing skills. .” The landscape appears 3-dimensional and rocky, an effect achieved through contour lines, and the woman’s skin appears diseased and rough, a textural effect simulated through Mutu’s strategically splotchy painting.

In comparison to some of Mutu’s other pieces, this collage doesn’t feature many shadows or value shifts, instead featuring what could be called “decorative value.” There is variety when it comes to line type in this piece; while all other elements of the collage feature crisp, precise lines, the figure herself is hazy and blurry around the edges. The piece has a strange mix of high and low-key value; while the figure and landscape are mostly made up of darker colors and values (low-key value), the sky acts as negative space for the sky and is a bright whitish gray (high-key value). The difference in value between the main scene and the background create an intriguing contrast.

The unfamiliar features seen in Second Born as well as in most of Mutu’s other collages, are often off-putting to viewers, but this discomfort in the foreign is a feeling Mutu aims for viewers to feel. Mutu works to combat her feelings of foreignness in the U.S. by creating figures that may be seen as universally “other,” while also being recognizably African. This technique gives all viewers, no matter where they are from, the experience of reflecting upon African stereotypes as well as the concept of exoticism. Mutu explained her reasoning, “I like exoticism . . . Anything that is different from the beholder’s perception of the norm is exotic. For me, blonde, blue-eyed Aryans are exotic. They are rare where I come from and rare to see on the street I live now (Thornton 57).” Exploring exoticism and the social hierarchy involved in defining which groups of people classify as “exotic” links quite closely to another theme Mutu is known for addressing, colonialism.

Colonialism

One experience of Mutu’s that allowed her to reflect on social power structures on a deeper level was her decision to study anthropology and culture along with her study of fine arts. Studying culture and anthropology allowed Mutu to learn more about colonialism, putting a name and a context behind many of her experiences growing up and behind her feelings of displacement in the U.S. She explained some of these realizations in an interview in 2004, remarking that in Kenya, “much faux anthropology and documentary work has been carried out.”  She went on to explain that as a child living in Kenya, it was “easy to dismiss” the role these storylines about her nation played in the formation of her identity.  “But after you live outside it for a long time,” she went on, “…you realize that the big-animals that inhabit the not-so-wild wilderness, a few indigenous locals, and sometimes a marathon runner or two are not a sufficient definition of your homeland (Farrell 141).” Combatting these colonially-defined storylines through caricature in her art has since been a passion of Mutu’s.

Soon after beginning her studies in New York, Mutu made some of her first attempts at mocking Western colonial practices. She did through crafting fake ethnographic African artifacts that might be “discovered” by western anthropologists. She remarked on the experience in an interview years later, saying “I quite irreverently began to make a lot of small, fake, old-dug-up-looking “African” objects. . . This cheekiness, fact-juggling, combined with my love of assemblage, have remained in the work, and still come through in the collage drawings and pieces I do now.”

“I quite irreverently began to make a lot of small, fake, old-dug-up-looking “African” objects. . . This cheekiness, fact-juggling, combined with my love of assemblage, have remained in the work, and still come through in the collage drawings and pieces I do now.”Wangechi Mutu

One collage in which this “cheekiness” is clear is in her 2009 piece “The Bride Who Married a Camel’s Head.” In this composition, a boney African woman with a headdress comprised of natural items such as animal skulls, flowers, minerals, and even various living creatures (most prominently snakes), sits with legs sprawled in a defiant pose on the grassy earth. In her hand, the subject holds a bloody camel head into the air, where alien-looking butterflies flutter sporadically. This piece toys with the stereotype of the primitive African, depicting a nearly naked subject who seems to be offering some sort of “sacrifice” to the Gods, potentially for dowry purposes. Stressing Mutu’s technique of critiquing power structures through highlighting stereotypes, an art critic once remarked on the piece, “The Bride reimagines signifiers of exoticism, combining the real with the otherworldly until the clichés surrounding ‘blackness’ are subsumed into an open-ended whole.” (Wilson 268).

In The Bride Who Married a Camel’s Head, Mutu uses shadowy value shifts in the corners of the frame in order to create dominance and highlight the importance of the central figure. The palette for the collage consists mainly of muted colors, but several pops of brightness in the form of blood spatter under the camel’s head and flowers in the woman’s headdress create variety. Movement plays a huge role in the piece as well – the woman raises her hand upwards with the camel’s head in hand, an action which moves the eyes up to the right edge of the canvas. Yet the blood spatter coming from the camel’s head functions to dramatically move the eyes downwards. Next, the woman’s legs are sprawled in such a way so as to move the eyes around the bottom of the composition, and back up the figure’s body, face, and headdress. Even the fluttery butterflies in the top right corner function to fill negative space and to keep the viewer interested in looking further.

Texture, perhaps most importantly, takes a role in the success of this piece. Mutu uses both actual and implied texture in this Papier Colle composition. Actual texture can be found in the paper cut outs which make up many elements of the woman’s headdress and body. These images of real objects provide an interesting contrast to the simulated texture which can be seen in elements such as the rocky earth and the texture of what appears to be dried blood on the woman’s face.

Depicting subjects that have blood in various places on their body is fairly common in Mutu’s work. She once explained her reasoning for this dramatic practice in an interview, stating that “There is this tiny percentage of people who live like emperors because elsewhere blood is being shed (Farrell 142).” This blood, while jarring at first glance, stands as an important element of the next theme for which Mutu is famous, violence against and societal subjugation of women.

Female Subjugation

Continuing to draw upon previously discussed themes, Mutu, a woman navigating a patriarchal society, works to specifically focus on and satirize the plight of women through her collages. The marks of violence against female subjects which can be seen in Mutu’s work in the form of blood and wounds are often hauntingly placed in contrast to pornographic images of sexualized femininity, a technique which poignantly caricaturizes the pressure women face to be properly feminine and sexual in the face of so much violence, pressure she herself has faced.

“There’s something both powerful and broken in all of these women who she creates from the fragments, picking them up from pieces into something fiercely reborn, but which can’t shake the harm of history that follows them.” Allison Meier

Mutu described the reason she takes this approach to her collages, stating that, societally, “Anything that is desired or despised is always placed on the female body.” Drawing upon this idea, Mutu works to graft together seemingly unrelated aspects of women’s societal reality, sexualization and violence, perhaps hoping to highlight a link she sees between the phenomena. Commenting on this practice of Mutu’s, an art critic stated, “There’s something both powerful and broken in all of these women who she creates from the fragments, picking them up from pieces into something fiercely reborn, but which can’t shake the harm of history that follows them.”

The simultaneous power and brokenness of Mutu’s female subjects can easily be seen in her 2003 collage, “People in Glass Towers Should Not Imagine Us,” a two paneled piece which features two female subjects posing seductively near trees in a grassy landscape (see below). Both of the subjects, who occupy separate panels, are seemingly tied to the trees they’re posing near. The thread used to tie the figures up also connects them across the panels and gushes blood into the blue sky, perhaps representative of their collective oppression as women. One of the subjects is paper-white (and of unknown race) and wears nothing but a textured crown, while the other is black and wears leopard-print tights, heels, and a flashy tiara made of stone figurines. While Mutu has been known to focus mostly on black women in her collages, she also often includes cut-out pieces of women of many races, sometimes even within the same composition, a choice she makes to draw attention to the violence and subjugation she believes women across the globe face, regardless of their race or nationality. Choosing to depict one of the female figures in this piece (with the eerily bright white skin) as belonging to an unknown racial category works to leave the viewer with the impression that regardless of race, women, but especially black women, live lives of marginalization. The importance of the black woman is also highlighted by her large proportion in comparison to the figure of unknown race.

Value shifts in the piece give a dreary illusion to what appears to be an otherwise bright, cloudless day. As has been seen in many of her compositions, texture is everywhere in this collage of Mutu’s. Actual texture is created with the addition of the paper cut outs, especially helpful in the creation of the black woman’s statue crown and the strange, futuristic machines which rest at the white woman’s feet. Even the grassy landscape, while simulated, looks as though it’s blowing wildly in the wind and could be easily grabbed from the page.

There is an asymmetrical balance to this collage; while one woman crouches over with her rear sticking out (certainly a reference to the stereotype of black women as being large bottomed), the other leans back. Even the trees each figure stands next to leans parallel to their body, adding to the asymmetrical balance of the piece. The way in which the figures lean also work to create movement in the piece; the eyes are inclined to move from figure to figure with the help of the thread connecting the panels on the top and the line of floating mushrooms located centrally. The eyes can move in a continuous loop around the frame, noticing new interesting details each time around.

Conclusion

In conclusion, through her collage compositions, Wangechi Mutu works to subvert social hierarchies through caricaturized imitation, exploring themes such as displacement, colonialism, and female subjugation, an approach informed by her life experiences and educational background. Mutu’s experience of being an immigrant in the U.S. influences her artistic style of depicting almost alien-like disjointed figures, while her experience of studying anthropology and culture leads her to critique colonialism through addressing ethnocentric stereotypes about Africa in her work. Finally, Mutu’s experience of being a woman informs her choice to depict sexualized female subjects who display wounds resulting from their subjugation as well as markers of their performance of culturally expected femininity. Mutu achieves many complex layers of meaning in fascinating and unique ways in her compositions, and these achievements combine to make her one of the most prolific contemporary collage artists of today.

Works Cited

• Farrell, Laurie Ann. “Perverse Anthropology: The Photomontage of Wangechi Mutu.” Looking Both Ways: Art of the Contemporary African Diaspora. Gent: Snoeck, 2003. N. pag. Print.
• Meier, Allison. “The Grotesque Beauty of Wangechi Mutu.” Hyperallergic. Hyperallergic, 05 Aug. 2013. Web. 05 June 2017. Saachi Gallery. “Wangechi Mutu.” 2005. London. Web. 01 June 2017, http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/wangechi_mutu.htm.
• Thornton, Sarah. “Act I., Scene 9: Wangechi Mutu.” 33 Artists in 3 Acts. New York: W.W. Norton, 2015. N. pag. Print.
• Wilson, Michael. “Wangechi Mutu.” How to Read Contemporary Art: Experiencing the Art of the 21st Century. Antwerp: Ludion, 2013. 268-69. Print.

Referenced Compositions

• Family Tree, 2012, Suite of 13; Mixed-media collage on paper; 16.25 x 12.25 inches
• Second Born, 2013; 24 kt gold, collagraph, relief, digital printing, collage and hand-coloring; 36 × 43 inches
• The Bride Who Married a Camel’s Head, 2009; Mixed-media collage on Mylar; 42 × 30 inches
• People in Glass Towers Should Not Imagine Us, 2003; Mixed-media collage on paper; 70 x 102 inches