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Phaidon | Artspace | Wangechi Mutu
Phaidon and Artspace are proud to present a new limited edition print by world-renowned contemporary artist Wangechi Mutu, released in tandem with the artist’s new Contemporary Artist Series monograph. Entitled WaterSpirit washed Pelican, the limited edition of only 60 prints features layered lithography, collage, and mica embellishments, adding dimension and depth to a nuanced, lyrical, and fantastical composition characteristic of Mutu’s singular style.
Wangechi Mutu x New Museum
The Limited Edition
Wangechi Mutu
WaterSpirit washed Pelican, 2022
Wangechi Mutu's remarkable body of work touches on such issues as sexuality, ecology, politics, and the rhythms and chaos that govern the world. Her boldly imaginative paintings, sculptures, and collages, often enriched with culturally-charged materials including tea, synthetic hair, Kenyan soil, feathers and sand, interweave fact with fiction, generating a unique form of myth-making that sets her apart from classical history or popular culture. WaterSpirit washed Pelican employs a found image from a pre-existing pelican illustration which becomes transformed by Mutu’s ingenious interventions.
“Working with older prints and found materials is a kind of archaeography, a re-discovery and re-naming of an image. It's my way to conjure up something from the past that can return to tell me something or remind me what I've forgotten.” —Wangechi Mutu
About the Artist:
Wangechi Mutu's work deals with the very idea of human representation; how we perceive and reproduce images of what we think we are, how we view others, and create images of what we think of them. In her ongoing conversations with figuration, what Mutu’s work looks at are value systems in Art and beyond, that either obscure or elevate our image and reflections.
Internationally renowned for a practice that encompasses various techniques and mediums including sculpture, film, installation, and collages, Wangechi Mutu’s work features female hybrid creatures and vivid dystopian dreamscapes.
Mutu has participated in several major solo exhibitions in institutions worldwide, most recently at Storm King Art Center, Wangechi Mutu, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Façade Commission: Wangechi Mutu, The NewOnes, will free Us, and The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Legion of Honor Museum, Wangechi Mutu: I Am Speaking, Are You listening?.
Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined
‘Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined reveals Mutu to be one of the best artists of her generation, using her innate versatility to demonstrate diversity as essential to life, real or imagined.’ – Roberta Smith, New York Times
The New Museum presents a major solo exhibition of Mutu’s work, bringing together over one hundred pieces from across the artist’s career, and is the museum's inaugural exhibition, in which the whole building is turned over to a single artist.
Image credit: Wangechi Mutu, In Two Canoe, 2022. (pages 236-237) Bronze, 180 × 68 × 72 in (457.2 × 172.7 × 182.9 cm). Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery
First Monograph by Phaidon
Wangechi Mutu's remarkable body of work touches on such issues as sexuality, ecology, politics, and the rhythms and chaos that govern the world. Her paintings, sculptures, and collages, often enriched with culturally-charged materials including tea, synthetic hair, Kenyan soil, feathers, and sand, interweave fact with fiction, generating a unique form of myth-making that sets her apart from classical history or popular culture. This is the first book to document her evolution and explore her impact.
