IT SEEMS AS IF WANEGECHI MUTU is the kind of artist who would hesitate to define herself based on a place — neither her birthplace of Nairobi, Kenya, nor Brooklyn, where she lives now. Instead, the provocative collage maker sees herself as a “contemporary, urban-raised woman.” Maybe that’s why she’s able to pull off her creepy, grotesque images of women — constructed from glossy fashion magazines and books of African art — merging two sets of cultures into art both critical and sensuous. She’ll talk on Thursday at the Hirshhorn as part of its “Meet the Artist” series.
» EXPRESS: What exactly do you do?
» MUTU: I take what seems like an image that is one particular way, and I switch it around and give it a new life. I use images from National Geographic, which still have a very colonial underpinning, and I turn them into, sort of, fantastical, titillating, critical subject matter. And I do that with bits and pieces from glossy magazines, fashion magazines, hunting magazines, motorbike magazines. … I guess I’m an image optimist.
» EXPRESS: You have an MFA in sculpture. How does that training affect your work?
» MUTU: I did sculpture because painting felt very limited, and it lacked the space for investigation that I needed. I am not a believer in the religion of paint. … Painting schools tend to be very conservative. You could challenge a sculpture or challenge a work in the critiques in a way you couldn’t with paint.
I don’t believe in that well-protected, guarded [place] where you can’t question something — sculpture, to me, was a safe zone where you’re constantly arguing and critiquing and reinventing the field.