In recent years, artist Wangechi Mutu’s bronze sculpture work has been obsessed with art types who are captivated by her hybrid visions, which capture the fantastical garden she cultivated in his imagination. While I have always found his drawings and other two-dimensional works visually captivating, particularly when you get into the weeds of composition, color and line – often approaching poetry in his tendrils of visual explosions and of sleek elegance – his recent sculptures really stand out. , as they span across genres and incubate form in his studio’s petri dish. In the current New Museum exhibition, curated by Margot Norton and Vivian Crockett with Ian Wallace, it is her sculptures that dominate the show, and when given context and space to breathe, they will steal your heart and Your spirit.
The mall-like spaces of this budding Silicon Valley institution – which I like to call contemporary art’s neoliberal dream factory for its start-up obsession with corporatization and elite capture – aren’t exactly a perfect frame or setting for the artist’s more earthy, holistic and elaborate visions of feminine and African dignity and power, which fill every floor of the New Museum.
A few works are a bit lacking, mainly due to curation. Let me explain: “Shavasana I” (2019) sounds like an interesting idea gone wrong, as if the Wicked Witch of the East ended up under a yoga mat instead of in Dorothy’s house. While many of Mutu’s sculptures navigate between genres which can be invigorating, here the work feels austere and bordering on cheesy. Placing it in the space on the roof of the museum doesn’t help; isolating the dark sculpture in the stark white space makes it appear like a corporate or oligarchic trophy – something the rest of the exhibit mostly avoids. And then there is “Poems by my Great Grandmother I” (2017), which seems orphaned in the strange alcove of the museum staircase – when I saw the same work (or one from the same series) at the Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town in 2018, it made a lot more sense, put in dialogue with other works in a more direct way. Here, it looks like an unfinished piece that you might come across in an artist’s studio.
Yet her little “Sisters” (2019) are a prime example of how she can achieve sophisticated spatial dynamics using very little, and her attention to detail and scale is extraordinary. “The Seated I” (2019), which was part of her excellent facade commission from the Metropolitan Museum, and “Crocodylus” (2020) testify to his mastery of large sculptural forms. Many of his sculptures fire the imagination in curious ways with their emotionless faces, armor-like carapaces, and evocation of natural, almost plant-like forms. “Crocodylus” makes me curious what would have happened if the ancient Sumerians had sculpted deities on LSD, while “MamaRay” (2020) might seem right at home at a sci-fi convention.
There were other times when I also felt that work looked better elsewhere. For example, the video work “The End of Carrying All” (2015) looks somewhat odd, placed against the wall in a way that flattens the work and makes it look more drawing-like. When the same work was exhibited in Venice in 2015, the placement was more intimate, while the video took on its own sculptural presence by gently separating from the wall. This exhibition in Venice was particularly exciting in its juxtaposition with “She’s Got the Whole World Inside Her” (2015), which more effectively echoed the themes of animation – not to mention that the piece plays a fundamental role in her work as a first large sculpture she created by pulping old paper from her studio, which she has continued ever since. I’m not sure “The Glider” (2021) has the same effect in this context, even if it’s a mysterious form that sneaks into your head.
A few works are a bit lacking, mainly due to curation. Let me explain: “Shavasana I” (2019) sounds like an interesting idea gone wrong, as if the Wicked Witch of the East ended up under a yoga mat instead of in Dorothy’s house. While many of Mutu’s sculptures navigate between genres which can be invigorating, here the work feels austere and bordering on cheesy. Placing it in the space on the roof of the museum doesn’t help; isolating the dark sculpture in the stark white space makes it appear like a corporate or oligarchic trophy – something the rest of the exhibit mostly avoids. And then there’s “Poems by my Great Grandmother I” (2017), which seems orphaned in the strange alcove of the museum’s staircase – when I saw the same work at the Zeitz MOCA in Cape Town in 2018, it had much more meaning, put in dialogue with other works in a more direct way. Here, it looks like an unfinished piece that you might come across in an artist’s studio.
Mutu’s drawings and collages create their own cosmology. Encountering art again and again, it occurs to me that while his drawings tend to break things up, his sculptures synthesize these ideas into almost archaeological objects, appearing as if they have been dug up and cleaned to be exposed. (A number of the sculptures are made from the paper she once glued together, so there is a literal coming together of these ideas and images.) What unifies the art is the dialogue between the different pieces, as well as the general notion that the artist grapples with something bigger within these concurrent bodies of work. There’s an itching sensation I get from some 2D work, which I think emerges from what I read as its own discomfort with stillness and the expected. When I learned that her mother was a nurse, often treating tropical diseases, I was able to better understand how, at a young age, she saw the body full of surprises and unexpected abilities (she mentioned seeing images of skin diseases in his mother’s medical books). She has effectively grafted this sense of wonder into all of her work that tackles human forms – our bodies are just another natural vessel from which eternal possibilities spring.
In its final week, the exhibition is one of the most notable solo exhibitions in town – I would say the Yellow Quick-to-See Smith retrospective at the Whitney Museum and the Juan de Pareja show at the Metropolitan Museum are the others. As Mutu creates some of the most exciting and invigorating art in the world, I encourage you to see it in person. And if you have the chance, take a moment to hang out with his various “basketball” works, such as “Nywele”, “Nyoka”, “Heads in a Basket” or “Musa” (all 2021 or 2022), and watch them as you see the future of art.
Wangechi Mutu: intertwined runs through June 4 at the New Museum (235 Bowery, Lower East Side, Manhattan) and is curated by Margot Norton and Vivian Crockett with Ian Wallace.
