L'Enfant Plaza 

IT SEEMS AS IF WANEGECHI MUTU is the kind of artist who would hesitate to define herself based on a place — neither her birthplace of Nairobi, Kenya, nor Brooklyn, where she lives now. Instead, the provocative collage maker sees herself as a "contemporary, urban-raised woman." Maybe that's why she's able to pull off her creepy, grotesque images of women — constructed from glossy fashion magazines and books of African art — merging two sets of cultures into art both critical and sensuous. She'll talk on Thursday at the Hirshhorn as part of its "Meet the Artist" series.

» EXPRESS: What exactly do you do?
» MUTU: I take what seems like an image that is one particular way, and I switch it around and give it a new life. I use images from National Geographic, which still have a very colonial underpinning, and I turn them into, sort of, fantastical, titillating, critical subject matter. And I do that with bits and pieces from glossy magazines, fashion magazines, hunting magazines, motorbike magazines. ... I guess I'm an image optimist.

» EXPRESS: You have an MFA in sculpture. How does that training affect your work?
» MUTU: I did sculpture because painting felt very limited, and it lacked the space for investigation that I needed. I am not a believer in the religion of paint. ... Painting schools tend to be very conservative. You could challenge a sculpture or challenge a work in the critiques in a way you couldn't with paint.

I don't believe in that well-protected, guarded [place] where you can't question something -- sculpture, to me, was a safe zone where you're constantly arguing and critiquing and reinventing the field.

» EXPRESS: In the past few years, Africa has become kind of trendy in America.
» MUTU: I've only ever lived in one country in Africa and that's Kenya, so I can only talk about Kenya.

» EXPRESS: Many Americans think of Africa as one homogenous place. How do you deal with that in your work?
» MUTU: You mean the fact that Americans can't tell that Africa's a continent? Of course it affects me. I don't consider the United States to be Peru ... but in the end, I'm lucky that a lot of my viewers try to educate themselves. They don't know everything about every single place, but they've tried to come with at least a sense of knowledge about where I'm from and what that means.

» EXPRESS: On Thursday, will you discuss how the places you've lived, Kenya and Brooklyn, affect your work?
» MUTU: I never discuss how Brooklyn has influenced my work -- the whole world has influenced my work. If those things have traces and elements of the places I've been to, wonderful. And if they carry the remnants of the cultural baggage of the places I've come from, it absolutely makes sense.

» Hirshhorn, Independence Avenue & 7th Street SW; Thu., 6:30 p.m. (advance ticketing starts at 6:15 p.m.), free; 202-633-1000. (L'Enfant Plaza)

Written by Express contributor Rachel Kaufman
Photo courtesy Hirshhorn

Posted by Express at 12:00 AM on January 31, 2008
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