Colgando en Texas

Wangechi Mutu

Exposición: Nov 11, 2004 – Ene 23, 2005


Con Hangin ‘en Texas Mutu pasa de los dibujos a un nuevo compromiso con la actuación. Combina el collage con video y objetos relacionados en una instalación que da testimonio de los refugiados africanos con cicatrices, es provocada por la tradición de las ejecuciones en Texas y, en última instancia, crea un espacio para contemplar los motivos universales para matar.

Como un bosque de cuerpos humanos en deterioro, las botellas de vino suspendidas gotean charcos rojos en el suelo del espacio de Mutu. Para agravar la sensación de mortalidad hay un olor maduro y una masa de heridas parecidas a estigmas excavadas en las paredes. En el otro extremo de la habitación hay un video amplio y bajo de una mujer, la propia artista, en un desierto rocoso. Corta los troncos de los árboles con un machete; la herramienta omnipresente utilizada en las zonas rurales de África para la agricultura y los actos de guerra violentos.

Si la instalación llora la muerte, también ofrece un espacio para su liberación. En la sala de conferencias adyacente hay varios collages enmarcados. Como los exquisitos cadáveres de los surrealistas, combinan capas dispares (forma de hongo, cabeza de mujer, masa tumoral, figura arqueada) para crear un espacio de trascendencia. A través de estas imágenes Mutu fabrica un momento metafórico para acceder a otro mundo.

Hangin ‘in Texas combina los medios de comunicación para continuar la meditación de Wangechi Mutu sobre la carnicería innecesaria y su cuestionamiento de la idea de que matar (de criminales en Texas, de un pueblo en Ruanda, de terroristas en Irak) puede absolver a los humanos de un daño o salvar a cualquiera.

Artista

Wangechi Mutu

Brooklyn, New York, USA

Kenyan-born Wangechi Mutu combines fashion magazine imagery and ink to create elegantly grotesque collages of the female body. Surreal and distinctive, the works at once reference ethnology, war, and portrayals of the female figure in mass media. Realized both on Mylar paper and directly on the wall, Mutu’s seductive hybrids—swan necks, talons for feet, distended bellies, mechanical appendages—use beauty to smuggle in the politics of violence and mutilation.
In the 1990s Mutu explored stereotypes of femininity and her African heritage through performative works. Since then she has primarily made drawings. That’s my death mask you’re wearing (2004) is emblematic of the collages—kaleidoscopic pools of reds and browns form a lithe female framed by tufts of savannah grass. The vamping body and magazine cutout eyes and lips imply glamour, yet swirls of ink create the impression of skin grafts. A missing arm, protruding prostheses, raw face, and heavy diamond earring support a darker narrative about the bloody effects of conflicts in Africa waged over scarce resources controlled by the West. Ever-sensuous, Mutu’s drawings are powerful critiques of contemporary media and cultural genocide.
Wangechi Mutu received her MFA from Yale University, New Haven, CT in 2000. Solo shows include Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, CA and Jamaica Center for the Arts and Learning, Queens, NY, both in 2003. Group exhibitions in 2004 include Fight or Flight, Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York, NY; Pin-up, Tate Modern, London, England; and Figuratively, The Studio Museum, Harlem, NY. The artist lives in Brooklyn, NY.

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Curador

Dan Cameron

Newport Beach, California

From 2012 to 2015 he was Chief Curator at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, California. In 2006, Dan Cameron founded the Biennial Prospect New Orleans, where he worked at until 2011. From 1995 to 2005 he was Senior Curator at the New Museum, New York, where he developed numerous group exhibitions, such as East Village USA and Living inside the Grid, and several individual shows dedicated to the artists Martin Wong, William Kentridge, Carolee Schneemann, Carroll Dunham, Doris Salcedo, José Antonio Hernández Diez, among others.
As independent curator he has organized many exhibitions that brought him international attention, such as El arte y su doble (Fundación Caixa, Madrid, 1987); El jardín salvaje (Fundación Caixa, Barcelona, 1991); Cocido y crudo (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1995), among many others. In 2003, he was the Artistic Director of the 8th Istanbul Biennial, and in 2006, Co-curator of the 5th Taipei Biennial.
He has published hundreds of texts in books, catalogues and magazines, and has given numerous talks and conferences at museums and universities around the world, also carrying out an important teaching activity in New York.

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