Wangechi Mutu is named Apollo Artist of the Year

‘I believe art is an ancient language that we use to communicate with each other into the future,’ Wangechi Mutu told the audience assembled for her TED Talk earlier this year. ‘We’ve left messages for each other using art. Messages that travel across the expanse of time and culture, reminding us of where we come from.’ This temporal hopscotch – jumping from prehistory to an imagined future – is characteristic of the Kenyan-American artist, whose work features motifs that range from folk symbols through to human-animal-plant-hybrids. It’s unsurprising that Mutu first moved to New York to study both art and anthropology.

Earlier this year, the results of this fertile cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary grounding could be seen throughout ‘Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined’, an exhibition at the New Museum in New York (2 March–4 June). This was the largest survey of the artist’s work to date, and a rare instance in which the whole building – including facade, lobby and hallways – was filled by the work of one artist. Mutu has long been praised by critics, but with the New Museum show, her work received much wider public acclaim.

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Image: Portrait of Wangechi Mutu

Photo: Khadija Farah