Wangechi Mutu & Rachel Kent:
In Conversation
Curator Rachel Kent in conversation with artist Wangechi Mutu, Sydney–Nairobi, September 2020.
Image credit: Wangechi Mutu, Family Tree, 2012, suite of 13 mixed-media collages on paper, 13 individually framed collages, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gladstone Gallery, New York, Brussels and Victoria Miro, London
Thank you so much for making the time to speak today, Wangechi. Firstly, I wanted to ask, how are you faring in this incredibly challenging time of global uncertainty and COVID-19? How are things in Kenya currently?
Thank you, Rachel, for asking. I’m really well. My work has been continuing here in the studio in Nairobi. I haven’t been able to travel to Brooklyn, so I’ve been working in Kenya for the last seven, almost eight months. It’s been quite astounding. The level of anxiety that the pandemic has brought about – I could only have managed that with the aid of my work and my studio, which has always been the case for me. It’s always been the mast that I hold onto.
At the same time, I have also had to think about what is really happening with certain issues that I’m trying to work through. I think of how much emotion and rage the world is going through because of all the issues that we know are related to the pandemic, related to social injustice, related to all of the racial problems that have been emerging.
The beauty about being in Kenya – a Black majority country, an African country, a small country – is that the problem of police brutality is very prevalent and yet quite different. I’ve had to really think about what it means. Where does that kind of violence sit, in a population which is so much poorer and doesn’t have the same racial stratification ...Subscribe to read this article in full
