ARTSpeak: Wangechi Mutu

Artist Wangechi Mutu gave a talk on her work and life on February 15, 2011 as part of the ARTSpeak series.Kenya-born Wanechi Mutu creates compelling and intricate artworks containing painted and collaged images, often using female figures constructed with photographic fragments of idealized women collected from print magazines. Her visually complex work can also be seen as a critique of the portrayal of black women as either tribal aborigines or hypersexualized pinups. Mutu’s artwork has been exhibited extensively in the U.S. and abroad. Her most recent solo shows include Hunt Bury Flee at the Gladstone Gallery in Chelsea, New York City, My Dirty Little Heaven at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany, and the Wiels Contemporary Museum, Brussels, Belgium, and This You Call Civilization? at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada. She has won numerous awards including the Deutsche Guggenheim Artist of the Year for 2010, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, and a Cooper Union Urban Visionaries Emerging Talent Award.You can find out more about Wangechi’s artwork by going to her website: http://www.wangechimutu.com/ARTSpeak is a project created by the Fine Arts department of the Fashion Institute of Technology. ARTSpeak consists of a number of different forums, including, but not limited to: A lecture series featuring distinguished artists whose work speaks about their own diverse lives, an FIT blog site where anyone in the FIT community can contribute commentary, and an upcoming exhibition of FIT student artwork.ARTSpeak is co-sponsored by the Fine Arts Department of The Fashion Institute of Technology and a 2010-2011 Diversity Council Grant