drip, drip, drip, 2017

Ink, acrylic and collage on mylar

Referencing various sources—from Afrofuturism to the fashion industry to science fiction—Wangechi Mutu is well known for a body of work that combines found materials, magazine cutouts, sculpture, and painted imagery. Her spectacular and provocative painted and collaged works, such as drip, drip, drip, depict plantlike biomorphic forms that are simultaneously unsettling and alluring, defying easy classification and identification. These pieces on Mylar function as strong social critiques while surveying poetic strains of allegory and the sensuousness of form, color, and pattern. Mutu frequently uses grotesque textures and has cited her mother’s medical books on tropical diseases as an inspiration, stating that there is “nothing more insanely visually interesting and repulsive than a body infected with tropical disease; these are diseases that grow and fester and become larger than the being that they have infected, almost.”