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Wangechi Mutu

The Original Nine Daughters, 2012

Information

Location Gallery 2
Artist

Wangechi Mutu

*1972, Nairobi, Kenya

lives and works in New York, USA and Nairobi, Kenya
Title

The Original Nine Daughters, 2012​
Medium Collage, etching, linocut, and aquatint on handmade paper
Copyright © Wangechi Mutu
Exhibition number AW104

Audio guide

Kenyan born artist Wangechi Mutu came to prominence while living in New York in the 2000s with fantastical mixed media collages and paintings featuring otherworldly female figures. Her series, The Original Nine Daughters, which combine several different printmaking techniques with hand coloring, Mutu reimagines the origin myth of the Kikuyu Tribe, the largest ethnic group in Kenya, from which she descends. According to the legend, the tribe’s founder, Gikuyu, fathered nine daughters, each of whom founded one of the nine original clans of Kenya.

Taking this story as her starting point, Mutu presents the nine daughters as hybrid creatures sporting hooves, claws, wings, feathers, and antennae. Some are marked with pins and annotations—an allusion to Victorian scientific diagrams and racist theories that denigrated African people. As with many of the artist’s works, these figures address the fragmented nature of female identity, using fantasy to draw attention to the way that women survive by inhabiting multiple roles and guises. For Mutu, they also represent a form of modern mythmaking, one that flows from a postcolonial context and which points to an imagined future, where women are liberated from violence, racism, and misogyny.

“I‘ve always been interested in artists who work with transformation, masks, and disguise. The idea I’m most enamored with is the notion that transformation can help us to transcend our predicament. We all wear costumes when we set out for battle.” - Quote Wangechi Mutu

Further artworks from this exhibition