"Intertwined" Exhibit at NOMA
"With Mutu's offerings, we are lured into daring to become vulnerable again to awe and beauty, to simplicity that might calm the unease. These works become time capsules. Here, too, is the mythic, the symbolic, the story-forming. Here is how worlds are formed. These Mutu assemblages. And we are grateful." -Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, These Assemblages: An Invocation, from the Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined exhibit catalogue.
This week, the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) opens a major solo exhibition of work by New York and Nairobi-based artist Wangechi Mutu, bringing together nearly one hundred sculptures, paintings, collages, drawings, and films to present the breadth of the Kenyan American artist's multidisciplinary practice from the mid-1990s to today.
On view from January 31 through July 14, 2024, "Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined" showcases her decades-long exploration of the legacies of colonialism, globalization, and African cultural traditions. The exhibition travels to NOMA from the New Museum, New York.
Mutu has had a relationship with New Orleans for over a decade and with NOMA since 2021. There are currently two Mutu sculptures permanently on display in NOMA's Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden (The Seated III, 2019 and Crocodylus, 2020). New Orleanians may also remember her contribution to Prospect One (2008), Miss Sarah's House, in the Lower 9th Ward, a display that served as a foundation to fundraise for a real house on the same site for Ms. Sarah Lastie, the wife of Fats Domino's drummer.
The temporary installation of Mutu's sculpture Two in Canoe in the Besthoff Sculpture Garden and the special gallery of her work in the nearby indoor pavilion marks the first time a NOMA exhibition has included both outdoor and indoor displays. Whether you enter her multilayered mythical world through the garden (free of charge) or the NOMA lobby (free for Louisiana residents every Wednesday) where you'll encounter Mutu on screen in her films The End of Eating Everything and My Cave Call, you'll be taken on a mythical journey where Black feminine power and cultural history converge. NOMA has included several items from its African collection to be in conversation with Mutu's work, including Nigerian divination bowls and other items that serve as both ghosts and guideposts for Mutu's messages.
From her collage works exploring everything from the Rwandan genocide and environmental destruction to a collection of sculptures created pre-COVID and made from Kenyan red volcanic soil depicting various viruses (her mother was a nurse, and her influence is apparent with the many explorations of illness, disease, and other fragilities of the body that connect us all), the work is disarming and poignant. Using both ancient and futuristic imagery, as she does in her mermaid sculpture Water Woman, Mutu returns again and again to the female form. Whether it's a stiletto heel piercing a snake or women turning into trees, a film depicting a mythological Mutu eating birds, or wielding a machete, there is a sense of resistance. Mutu uses fragmentation to create something whole and seems to reclaim race, gender, and power through transformation and transmutation.
On Wednesday, January 31, NOMA will celebrate the exhibition with an opening party headlined by renowned Nairobi-based musician, producer, and DJ Blinky Bill. Free and open to the public, this opening program will also include access to the exhibition; a collage-making and assemblage art workshop with artist and designer Denisio Truitt and NOMA's Creative Aging and Access Coordinator Jessica Johnson; and a pop-up hosted by the museum's Teen Art Council. Café NOMA will be open serving food and a specialty cocktail.
