Wangechi Mutu
Simbi Siren, 2026
Installation view, In Minor Keys, 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 2026. Photo: Andrea Rossetti

About

In her diverse practice, Wangechi Mutu (b.1972, Nairobi, Kenya) reflects on sexuality, femininity, ecology, politics, the rhythms and chaos of the world and our often damaging or futile efforts to control it. Exploring and subverting cultural preconceptions of the female body and the feminine, Mutu proposes worlds within worlds, populated by powerful hybridized female figures.

Wangechi Mutu lives and works between Brooklyn and Nairobi. Mutu received her MFA from Yale University (2000) and BFA from Cooper Union (1996). Her work has been the subject of numerous solo shows, including Black Soil Poems, Galleria Borghese, Rome; Cleaning EARTH, Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, Rome (2025); Wangechi Mutu:Intertwined, New Museum, New York (2023), travelling to New Orleans Museum of Art (2024); Wangechi Mutu, Storm King Art Center, New Windsor (2022), Wangechi Mutu: I Am Speaking, Are You Listening?, Legion of Honor, San Francisco (2021); A Promise to Communicate, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2018); and Wangechi Mutu: The End of eating Everything, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX (2018). In 2019, she inaugurated The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Facade Commission, with an exhibition entitled The NewOnes, will free Us.

Wangechi Mutu's work has been included in the 56th (2015) and 61st (2026) International Art Exhibitions of La Biennale di Venezia, as well as the 2019 Whitney Biennial, New York.

Mutu was the Artist Honoree at the Baltimore Museum of Art (2025); Storm King Art Center (2024); Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art (2024); Nasher Museum of Art (2023); the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (2018); and the Hirshhorn Museum (2017).

Mutu's work is held in international institutional collections, including Brooklyn Art Museum, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston; Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Art (MFA), Houston; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Pérez Art Museum Miami; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), San Francisco; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Tate, London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Exhibitions

Select Press

‘In Minor Keys’ Hits All the Right Notes

Hyperallergic

Hrag Vartanian

May 7, 2026

‘In Minor Keys’: discover the themes that define the 61st Venice Biennale exhibition

Wallpaper*

Amah-Rose Abrams

May 7, 2026

First Impressions of a Venice Biennale Torn Apart by the Present

Artnet

Ben Davis

May 6, 2026

Koyo Kouoh’s Lasting Legacy

ELLE

Alexis Okeowo

April 27, 2026

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Wangechi Mutu Awarded National Gallery Contemporary Fellowship in Landmark UK Collaboration

Art Plugged

April 22, 2026

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111 Artists Announced for the Venice Biennale

artnet News

Jo Lawson-Tancred

February 25, 2026

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The 100 Best Artworks of the 21st Century: Wangechi Mutu, “Yo Mama,” 2003

ARTnews

Alex Greenberger

March 5, 2025

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Afrofuturism: Reimagining the Past and Telling a Black Fantastic Future

ARTnews

Shantay Robinson

February 18, 2025

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