Artist Wangechi Mutu will give a talk on her work and life on Tuesday, February 15, 2011, from 1 to 2 pm, in the Katie Murphy Amphitheatre. The Amphitheatre is located in the Fred P. Pomerantz Art and Design Center (also known as the “D” Building), 27th Street and 7th Avenue, at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

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 watch the video of Wangechi Mutu’s lecture at FIT here:

 

You can find out more about Wangechi’s artwork by going to her website:  http://www.wangechimutu.com/

Wangechi Mutu, Before Punk Came Funk, 2010, Mixed media, ink, paint, collage on mylar, 54 x 51 inches

Wangechi Mutu, photo by Flora Hanitijo