(Un)Masked: Wangechi Mutu

Kenyan born and raised Catholic, artist Wangechi Mutu’s own experience of self-definition in America’s male-driven and predominantly white culture has allowed for greater awareness to constructions of identity. Her collage series “History of the Different Classes of Uterine Tumors” responds to contemporary Western pressures concerning standards of beauty, national African identity, and problematic stereotypes of African-American women. These mixed-media collages incorporate a host of mediums, textures, and images to create conglomerate identities that, each floating solitary on pages torn from vintage medical illustrations, appear more alien-like than human. Simultaneously compelling and repulsive, Mutu’s collages subtly encourage viewers to grapple with psychological, political, and social issues that extend beyond the aesthetics of each collage.

By cutting out images from popular fashion and pornographic magazines, Mutu decontextualizes these clippings from the sphere of the male gaze while simultaneously altering their meaning--they no longer appear as demoralized women but reclaimed elements of a new identity. Yet a tension exists in Mutu’s collages, between this reclaiming of beauty within a new context and a sense of otherness in negotiating one’s identity. In this respect, collage remains a significant medium for Mutu; it represents a unification of two ideas that don’t necessarily produce a logical outcome, it disrupts expectations and distinct boundaries. Fragments from widespread magazines reveal cultural ideals that perpetuate social values and expectations. Mutu’s technique of anthropomorphizing these manipulated images of beauty and positioning them atop vaguely gruesome anatomical diagrams creates an uneasy and alarming sense of racism and sexism. Mutu transforms them into ethnographic studies that emphasize an animal-like nature of African women, closer to apes than White American women.

While these collaged portraits contain deeply rooted social messages, they never blatantly thrust meaning upon their audience. They are non-realistic narratives that resist traces of elegant construction, rather they appear as if to have evolved naturally. The playfulness of these portraits, furthermore, brings a level of lightheartedness to female suffering, as if these fashioned faces temporarily mask the experienced hardships.

For Mutu, the face signifies the fundamental outlet for recognizing differences. In a culture where people find it acceptable to define identity based on facial categorization, first impressions ultimately determine who you are. For African-American women like Mutu, the face represents the center for irrational and unfounded racial oppression and presumptions. In opposition, therefore, Mutu’s series of animal-like heads disrupts stereotypes and idealizations of the African female body that is continuously perpetuated and wrongly represented.