Mutu has worked extensively with Mylar polyester film. Manipulating ink and acrylic paint into pools of colour she carefully applies to her surfaces imagery sampled from disparate sources - medical diagrams, fashion magazines, anthropology and botany texts, pornography, and traditional African arts. The resulting works are a rebuke to the conventions of aesthetics and ethnography and eroticism that underpin such publications, offering instead an existence that is riotously free of biological determinism or psychological conditioning. In recent collage-paintings a substrate of vinyl and linoleum allows for a more densely textured and sculptural ground. Painterly techniques are employed alongside Mutu's signature construction of images comprised of deftly cut-out and collaged forms. In addition, Mutu's visual language is further enriched by her use of unexpected materials such as tea, synthetic hair, Kenyan soil, feathers, and sand, amongst other media - many of which are imbued with their own cultural significations.

Wangechi Mutu was born in 1972 in Nairobi, Kenya, she works in New York and Nairobi.

Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined a major solo exhibition presenting works across the breadth of Mutu's practice is currently on view at the New Museum in New York, through until June 2023.

Other recent exhibitions include What Is Left Unspoken, Love, at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, USA (March - August 2022), as well as two solo exhibitions at Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, New York, USA (May - November 2022) and Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina, USA.

In 2019, the artist was featured in the Whitney Biennial, and was commissioned to create sculptures for The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Fifth Avenue façade niches – the first-ever such installation on Met Museum's historic exterior – inaugurating a new annual series. TIME recently named the artist one of its ‘28 Outstanding Women’.

Institutional venues for solo shows have included included New Museum, NY, USA (2023); Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY, USA (2022), Wangechi Mutu: I Am Speaking, Are You Listening?, Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA, USA (2021); University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA (2020 - 2021); A Promise to Communicate, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Boston, MA, USA (2018); Wangechi Mutu: The End of eating Everything​, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX, USA (2018); Water Woman, The Contemporary Austin, TX, USA (2017); Journeys into Peripheral Worlds, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, USA (2017); Banana Stroke, Performa 17 Biennial, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA (2017); The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2016); SITE Santa Fe (2016]; the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, North Carolina (2013), touring to the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York (2013), the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (2014), and the Mary and Leigh Block Museum, Northwestern University, Illinois (2014); the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia, touring to Orange County Museum, California (both 2013); Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal (2012); Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden, (2012); Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2010); Art Gallery of Ontario, Ontario (2010); Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2009); and Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2008). 

Her work was featured at the 56th International Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Venice Biennale (2015), and has been presented in exhibitions at institutions including Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA (2019); travelled to Gibbes Museum, Charleston (2019); Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, MI (2019); Smith College Museum of Art, MA (2020); Frye Art Museum, Seattle (2021); Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City (2021); The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C., USA (2020); Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel (2020); Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2020); Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, USA (2019); MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, USA (2019); Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina, USA (2018); Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX, USA (2018); Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo (MAXXI), Rome, Italy (2018); Museum of Contemporary Art Africa inaugural exhibition, Cape Town (2017–2019); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2020, 2017 and 2014); Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2017); Studio Museum in Harlem (2017); Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2016- 2017); Fondazione Prada, Milan (2016); Yale University School of Art, New Haven (2016); Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco (2016); the Grand Palais, Paris (2015); Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco (2015); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humblebaek (2015); Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC (2015 and 2014); Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt (2014); Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro (2013); Tate St. Ives, United Kingdom (2013); National Gallery of Canada, Ontario (2013); Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India (2012); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012); Brooks Art Museum, Memphis (2012); MOCA, Los Angeles (2010); Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver (2010); Tate Liverpool, United Kingdom (2010); 10th Biennale d'art Contemporain de Lyon (2009); and The New Museum, New York (2008). Wangechi Mutu received the 2010 Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year award.

Works by the artist are currently featured in the group show A Gateway to Possible Worlds: Art & Science-fiction at Centre Pompidou-Metz, Paris, France until 10 April 2023. The artist's works will continue to feature in the group show Feminine power: the divine to the demonic touring to the National Museum of Australia, opening 8 December 2022 through to 27 August 2023.