Wangechi Mutu

Wangechi Mutu

Born in 1972 in Nairobi, Kenya, Wangechi Mutu works in painting, collage, sculpture, film and performance. In exploring and subverting visual tropes from popular culture, Mutu challenges dominant narratives around race, sexuality, ecology and global politics to create her own form of mythmaking. Her work often counters the misrepresentation and oppression of women: hybrid figures, referencing cultural history, science fiction and folklore, recur in her work as emblems of feminine agency.

Over the past two decades, Mutu has exhibited extensively in international forums. Recent solo exhibitions include New Orleans Museum of Art (2024), New Museum, New York (2023), Storm King Art Center, New Windsor (2022), Legion of Honor, San Francisco (2021) and Institute of Contemporary Art Boston (2018).

In 2019, Mutu was awarded the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s inaugural Façade Commission. Her work was featured at the 56th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, All the Worlds Futures by Okwui Enwezor and has been presented in numerous exhibitions across Europe, including in London, Paris, Rome, Munich and Vienna.

Mutu was the Artist Honoree at the Baltimore Museum of Art (2025); Storm King Art Center (2024); Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art (2024); Nasher Museum of Art (2023); the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (2018); and the Hirshhorn Museum (2017). 

In 2025, she became the first living female artist to exhibit at Rome's Galleria Borghese with 'Black Soil Poems'. 

Her work features in the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia - 'In Minor Keys' by Koyo Kouoh.

Image: Wangechi Mutu Contemporary Fellowship artist photographed in the National Gallery ©  Photo: The National Gallery, London