wangechi mutu, avatar/cyborg designer

After studying anthropology and Fine Arts at the New School and Cooper Union, Wangechi Mutu studied Sculpture at the Yale School of Art and began her illustrious career making collage-paintings, assemblage objects and multisensory installations. This award winning artist of Kenyan origin composites image fragments from nature books, glossy periodicals, medical illustrations, anthropological textbooks, pornographic photography and publications of traditional African Arts.

Mutu creates fantastical environs that truly challenge oppressive misrepresentations of women by inventing powerful, alternate female identities and avatars. Her work – which also includes sculpture, drawing, performance and video – features otherworldly figures, often with mechanical or serpentine appendages evocative of science fiction characters addresses the multifaceted nature of female identity.

Whether the figure is in flight, standing erect or crouching ready to pounce or hiding from her pursuant, Mutu uses such ambiguities to draw attention to the way that women, and black women in particular, survive by inhabiting multiple roles and guises within Western visual culture.

In doing so, she also points to an imagined future where women are unattackable and liberated from the violence enacted upon them as well as from biological determinism and gender stereotyping.