Histology of the Different Classes of Uterine Tumors, 2005-2006
Collaged Digital Print
23 x 17 in
(58.42 x 43.18 cm)
Edition. Printers Proof #1 of 2 - Suite of 12 prints. (From the edition of: 1 suite Hors d’Commerce, 1 suite BAT, 2 suites PPs, 4 suites APs, 25 edition suites)
$25,000
Wangechi Mutu’s prints, "Histology of the Different Classes of Uterine Tumors," takes imagery from Victorian medical diagrams of cancers in female bodies, pornography, and glossy women’s magazines. Her luscious and complex arrangement of these disparate materials addresses the perpetual objectification of black female bodies. Originally created as a series of 12 collages, the figures also represented colonial power and represent a range of cultural preconceptions.
Gift of the Janet Flohr with proceeds benefiting Artpace.
About the artist
Wangechi Mutu
Kenyan
b. 1972
Wangechi Mutu is a contemporary Kenyan artist noted for her work conflating gender, race, art history, and personal identity. Creating complex collages, videos, sculptures, and performances, Mutu’s work features recurring mysterious leitmotifs such as masked women and snake-like tendrils. Her pastiche-like practice combines a variety of source material and textures to explore consumerism and excess: for a 2005 work titled Cancer of the Uterus, Mutu employed a medical pathology diagram, facial features cut from a magazine, fur, and a heavy application of black glitter to create an eerily distorted face. The almost science fiction-like nature of her imagery has placed her work within the realm of Afrofuturism, and her practice is often discussed as providing an alternate course of history for people of African descent. Deeply concerned with Western commercialism, Mutu has explained that “a lot of my work reflects the incredible influence that America has had on contemporary African culture. Some of it's insidious, some of it's innocuous, some of it's invisible. It's there.” Born on June 22, 1972 in Nairobi, Kenya, she received her BFA from Cooper Union in 1996, and subsequently her MFA in sculpture from Yale University in 2000. Her work has been exhibited worldwide, including a major retrospective that opened in the Nasher Museum of Art in North Carolina in 2013, and traveled globally. In 2019, her exhibition The NewOnes, will free Us, was featured as the inaugural Facade Commission at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It consisted of four bronze sculptures, individually titled The Seated I, II, III, and IV, that sat in each niche on the front of the museum which had previously remained empty for 117 years.
