Artist Database

Wangechi Mutu was born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1972, and lives and works between Nairobi and New York City. Mutu obtained a BFA from Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York in 1996, and an MFA with a specialisation in sculpture from Yale University in 2000.

Mutu’s artwork explores black femininity, sexuality, ecology and politics through a wide range of media, including sculpture, collage, drawing, performance and video. The Kenyan-American artist is most well-known for striking paintings and collages that chart the misrepresentation and trauma experienced by black women. There is a haunting and mythological air in these works expressed through Mutu’s distinctive zoomorphic and cyborg-like figures.

Mutu has recently been included in the notable group exhibition In Minor Keys at the 61st International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (2026). She has also presented the major solo exhibitions Black Soil Poems at Galleria Borghese, Rome (2025) and Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined, which was shown at the New Museum, New York and the New Orleans Museum of Art (2023 - 2024).

Mutu has received Honorary Awards for Artistic Excellence from the Baltimore Museum of Art (2025), Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art (2024), Nasher Museum of Art (2023) and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (2018). As the 2026 recipient, she is also the second artist to be awarded the National Gallery’s two-year Contemporary Fellowship.

Mutu’s artwork is included in the permanent collections of prominent museums, including the Tate in London, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, as well as New York’s leading institutions like the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.