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Wangechi Mutu Perverse Anthropology: The Photomontage of Wangechi Mutu

A Conversation with Lauri Firstenberg

In her most recent series of works on paper, "Figures" (2003), Wangechi Mutu articu­

lates mutilated flesh by manipulating ruddy mud and plaster to describe hybrid hu­

manoid creatures. Appearing to invade the page spontaneously, these forms are ac­

tually the stylized products of a controlled compositional process that begins with

elements of collage and is completed by the artist's hand in sumi ink and acrylic. Fan­

tastical and flagrantly vulgar, Mutu's brand of montage accentuates the incongruous

relationship between face and figure. Culling sexual imagery from fashion and porn,

from ethnographic photographs in National Geographic and high-gloss populist cof­

fee table books such as Africa Adorned, the "Figures" series deconstructs the female

body until it becomes a series of leprous dismembered pinups (Figs. 69, 70, 72, 77).

The figures produced by these acts of ferocity are grotesque yet precious, atrocious

yet aestheticized. Pantene-treated and blown-out hair is cut out and positioned as

horse tail. An abstract body, muddied and burned, is punctuated by a peg leg. A

screaming mouth is mismatched with two disparate appropriated eyes. These corpo­

real ruptures are highly exaggerated, equating the found female form with construct

and artifice.

The work signals Hannah Hbch's series "From an Ethnographic Museum;' and par­

ticularly Strange Beauty (1929), an undeniable point of departure for Mutu's pho­

tomontages and for her fascination with the absurd and the abject. Hbch's white odal­

isque, topped by what may be a shrunken head, or an anonymous tribal-figure Fig. 68 Pin-Up. 2001. by Wangech, Mutu. Mixed media on

paper. 33 x 25.4 cm. Courtesy of the Artist.

Fig. 69 Figures', 2003. by Wangechi Mutu. Mixed media

on mylar, 56 x 43 cm. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and

Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects.

Fig. 70 Figures'. 2003. by Wangechi Mutu. Mixed media

on mylar, 107 x 81 cm. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and

Susanne V,elmetter Los Angeles Projects.

Cat. 24 a Machinehead from the Fungus series, by

Wangechi Mutu. Ink, acrylic and collage on mylar, 43 x 28

cm. Commissioned by the Museum for African Art,

Courtesy of the artisl and Susanne Vielmetter Los

Angeles Projects.

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138

Cal. 24 b Fungus, 2003, by Wangechi Mutu. Mixed media

on mylar, 89 x 61 em. Commissioned by the Museum for

African Art, Courtesy of the artist and Susanne Vielmetler

Los Angeles PrOJects.

Cal. 24 c Fungus, 2003, by Wangechi Mutu. Mixed media

on mylar, 92 x 61 em. Commissioned by the Museum for

Afr ican Art, Courtesy of the artist and Susanne Vrelmetter

Los Angeles Projec ts.

Fig. 71 Creatures , 2002, by

Wangechi Mutu. Mixed media on

mylar, 41 x 30.5 cm. Courtesy of

Susanne Vielmelter Los Angeles

Projects.

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fragment, is further exaggerated by the superimposition of displaced eyes and magni­

fied lens, which accentuate the incongruity of its construction.' The formal compar­

isons with Mutu's art are uncanny, yet it is dangerous to read the work as a simplistic

inversion of its historical precedent. In any case, Mutu replaces Hbch's surrogate for

the other by replacing the ethnographic artifact with concrete black figural features­

or perhaps it is the emblems of whiteness in Mutu's constructions that are the tokens

of difference here.

Mutu's "Classic Profile" series (2002) has been described as a subversion of por­

traiture. 2 Rehearsing a kind of visual anthropology, it excavates the Western imaginary

by using media imagery to produce a stylized, automatonlike figuration victimized by

various cultural contaminations (Figs. 73-76) . The "Creatures" series (2003) shifts away

from the logic of the pinup to make selections from travel and wild-life publications, unit­

ing contradictory elements to form a bizarre body that is at once balanced and excessive

(Figs. 71, 78, 79). Disparate features are not so much juxtaposed as sutured together,

not seamlessly but dissonantly-perhaps a metaphor for cross-cultural fusion and fric­

tion. Out-of-proportion body parts are amalgamated and made monstrous. A saintlike

figure posed in romance-novel ecstasy props herself up with sturdy flexed hands taken

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Fig. 72 Figures ', 2002, by Wangechi Mutu. Ink, acryl,c and

collag e on paper, B 1 x 107 em. Collection of Rebecca and

Alexander Stuart. Photo: Courtesy of the artis t.

Fi g. 73 Classic Profile, 2002-2003, by Wangechi Mutu.

Mixed media on rr ,:~:, 56 x 4~ em. Collection of Stu rt

Roberts, NY. Photo: Courk:;y of Ihe artlsL

Fig. 74 Classic Profile, 2002-03, by Wangechi Mu u. Mixed

medIa on mylar, 56 x 43 em. Courtesy of he artIst and

Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects.

F'g . 75 Alien from the Classic Profile series, 2002, by

Wangechl Mutu. Mixed media on paper, 30 x 25 c .

Collection of Stuart Roberts, NY. Pho 0 : Jerry L Thompson.

Fig. 76 Classic Profile, 2002-03, by Wangechl Mutu. Mixed

media on my I r, 56 x 43 em. Courtesy of the artist and S -

sanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects.

from pornographic imagery. Such compressions of female iconographic genres pro­

duce a warped cosmology of woman as mad muse, aggravated by Mutu's disjunctive

shifts between drawn and appropriated features: jeweled claw, detached breast, de­

composing skin, conical coiffure. In this way Mutu abstracts and amplifies stereotype.

Her acts of sampling and reconfiguration dupe categorical representations of femininity

and ethnicity to investigate a kind of quasi-deconstructed exotic lexicon wherein cos­

mopolitanism meets anachronism. These images do not defeat the erotic, however; they

perform within the language of hegemony, borrowing canonical visual tropes to co-opt,

alter, amputate, and confound. Mutu plays on intersecting tropes of femininity, incorpo­

rating floral patterns and other ornamental elements in what she describes as a meeting

of mutilation and decoration. This lexicon of appropriation emphasizes artifice in relation

to the body.

Lauri Firstenberg: How do you think your work sits within a larger art-historical tra­

jectory of figurative col/age? How does it negotiate both precursors and contempo­

raries working a similar vein, such as Romare Bearden, Hannah Hoch, Fatimah Tug­

gar, and Candice Breitz?

Wangechi Mutu: Artists like Claude Cahun, Katherine Dunham, Coco Fusco, and

even Hussein Chalayan fascinate me. With Cahun there's a real sense of personal

narrative; she was able to tackle social critique with drama, she portrayed melancholy

and spirituality using poetry and performance, and her use of materials was wild and

uninhibited. I've always been interested in artists who work with transformation,

masks, and disguise-I value their practices for being somehow schizophrenic, con­

tradictory, and emotional. Camouflage and mutation are big themes in my work, but

the idea I'm most enamored with is the notion that transformation can help us to tran­

scend our predicament. We all wear costumes when we set out for battle. The lan­

guage of body alteration is a powerful inspiration. I think part of my interest in this

comes from being an immigrant, but I've also always been interested in how people

perform and maneuver among one another.

Of the artists you mentioni I identify most with Bearden, his work strikes me as the

least reactionary. To use photocollage in the time of jazz and the Harlem Renaissance

was really so powerful and soulful: here was this medium, photography, that was be­

ing used to define and document reality, to encapsulate truth and time, and Bearden

used it to disrupt its own integrity and create visually stunning narratives of black lives

and dreams. Also, some of his images use abstraction in ways I've seen in Southern

and Central African sculpture-sculpture from the Congo, Makonde art from Mozam­

bique. Bodies are attached onto other bodies, creating a latticework of limbs, expres­

sions, and narrative. I rely on that method in my work.

I do admire Hoch's work and simple process. I can tell that she rummaged madly

through books and magazines. But the idea of clear-cut binaries-African/European,

archaic/modern, and religion/pornography-I've never really believed in that. I'm inter­

ested in powerful images that strike chords embedded deep in the reservoirs of our

subconscious. I'm not really using collage to critique photography, advertising, or

ethnographic photography per se.

Kenya is a very photogenic country, and so much faux anthropology and documentary

work has been carried out there. When you live in such a country it's easy to dismiss

the role it plays in forming your identity. But after you live outside it for a long time, you

realize that the big animals that inhabit the not-so-wild wilderness, a few indigenous

locals, and sometimes a marathon runner or two are not a sufficient definition of your

homeland. Besides addressing and even challenging an art-historical trajectory of fig­

urative-photographic collage, my work is a reclaiming of an imagined future. Collages,

• • •••• • •••••••

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Fig. 77 Figures'. 2003, by Wangechi Mutu. Mixed media

on mylar, 56 x 43 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Susanne

V,elmelter Los Angeles Projects.

Fig. 78 Intertwined from the Creatures series, 2002, by

Wangechl Mutu. Mixed media on mylar, 41 x 30.5 cm.

Courtesy of the Arl '" and Susanne VielmeHer Los

Angeles Projects. Photo: Jerry L. Thompson.

Fig. 79 The Hunt fro m the Creatures series, 2002, by

Wangechi Mutu. Ink, acrylic, collage on paper,

41 x 30.5 cm. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Jerry

L. Thompson.

141

assemblage, and mixing genres are merely tools to facilitate the rewriting of my mem­

ories and history.

LF: There has been quite a lot of talk recently about "Afro-futurism, " an idea that

frames contemporary black artistic production around the cultural models of futurism

and science fiction. What is your take on this visual and cultural conceptual frame­

work, and do you read your work within it?

WM: Afro-futurism has become such a charged and hot idea recently. Maybe it's be­

cause the idea of "Africa and the future" is seen as an oxymoron. I've never been afraid

of extermination as such; I think being raised in a majority-black nation has a lot to do

with that. But I have to admit that being transplanted changes your notions of self and

survival. I'm sure the more extreme your migration story is, the more complicated do

issues of personal and cultural survival become for you. Displacement anxiety and a

fractured identity are implied in my drawings; there are mutilations and awkward at­

tachments in the collage work. I think one of my most poignant moments in my late

teens was realizing that my father's generation was this group of men who 'd been

raised to understand the true traditional value of a large herd of cattle and goats, yet

they were expected to mutate and become middle-class, Mercedes-owning, intellec­

tually rigorous, three-piece-suit-wearing urbanites.

LF: Your treatment of the body is aestheticizing yet violent. Are you worried about the

possibility of sustaining rather than resignifying models of black subjectivity?

WM: Violent incidences are often fastened to images of privilege in my drawings. Im­

ages of altered or slightly mutilated bodies with diseased skin sometimes looks like

bizarre and colorful fabric costumes. There is this tiny percentage of people who live

like emperors because elsewhere blood is being shed. Women 's bodies are particu­

larly vulnerable to the whims of changing movements, governments, and social norms.

They're like sensitive charts-they indicate how a society feels about itself. It's also dis­

turbing how women attack themselves in search of a perfect image, and to assuage

the imperfections that surround them.

LF: Do you see your work as revisualizing stereotypes?

WM: I'm fascinated by stereotypes. We become like deer in the headlights when

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Fi g. 80 Pin· Up , 200 1, by Wangechi Mutu. Mixed media on

paper, 33 x 25.4 cm, Couriesy of the arils t.

Fig, 8 1 Soul on a Peg Leg, 200 1, by Wangechl Mulu. Ink,

collage, and mixed media on paper, 152 x 1 12 cm,

Courtesy of the arils t.

Fig. 82 The Empire 's Tail from the Pin Up /I series, 200 1,

by Wangechi Mutu. Watercolor and collage on paper,

33 x 25.4 cm. Collecti on of the ari ist. Photo: Jerry

L. Thompson.

we're exposed to them. I don't believe attacking stereotypes head-on is an effective

solution-they seem to get more power from this type of attention. I'm fascinated by

how we come to a collective consensus as to what a stereotype is, and, even further,

on how to use it against one another. So few things are really what they're rumored to

be, and yet we use them to form opinions constantly. "Civilized behavior," "primitive

art," "democratic nations"-they're all volatile and nebulous definitions. I suppose you

could say that I mine stereotypes for their weak foundations and produce figures that

are distillations of my own issues, beliefs, perceptions, and personal stereotypes.

LF: What is the relationship between your sculptural practice and your work on pa­

per? 00 you view your sculpture as a shift from your former production, or do you

view your present work as "built drawings?"

WM: When I first came to New York I was studying anthropology and cultural studies

together with fine art. I was fascinated with archaeological and anthropological arti­

facts, and with the way they're used to read a people's entire history and culture.

Every critique I had in class always came back to the idea that I was from the African

continent, so I quite irreverently began to make a lot of small, fake, old-dug-up-Iooking

"African" objects. I used bottles, feathers, tar, and old umbrellas that I had around. I al­

so made huge wearable sculptures that looked like traditional jewelry, and pho­

tographed them in dramatic light with backdrops resembling ethnographic photo­

graphs I'd seen. (Figs. 83, 84 a-c) This cheekiness, fact-juggling, combined with my

love of assemblage, have remained in the work, and still come through in the collage

drawings and wall pieces that I do now.

1. Maud Lavin, "The Mess of History or the Unclean Hannah Hiich;' in Catherine de Zegher, ed., Inside the Visible: An

Elliptical Traverse 01 Twentieth Century Art in, 01, and lrom the Feminine (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1996),

p.122.

2. See Aida Mashaka Croal, "Subversive, Absurdist and Beautiful;' Alricana, March 5, 2003.

Fig. 83 Untitled, 1997, by Wangecl:. Mutu. Mixed media

sculpture, 43 x 14.6 x 8.25 cm. Co"eclior of the ar"·

Photo: Jerry L. Thompson.

Fig. 84a-c Untitled. 1997, by Wangechi Mutu. Mixed me­

dia sculpture, dimensions vary. (Left and lTiiddle) Collec­

tion of Danny Simmons, NY. (Right) Colleclion of the

artisl Photo: Jerry L. Thompson.

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