WANGECHI MUTU

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) features Wangechi Mutu with a retrospective exhibition spanning the last ten years of her career. As a migrant from Kenya, the New York based artist draws on her cultural heritage exploring ideas of colonisation, famine, violence, representations of the black female body as well as women’s domesticity and labour.

Mutu’s concern with the collision of Third World and First World – starvation and gluttony – come to the forefront in the piece, Exhuming Gluttony: Another Requiem. Which requires the audience to step inside a room evocative of the aftermath of some violent banquet. Suspended wine bottles slowly drip their contents on the table and floor, filling the room with a pungent odour that is familiar and yet sickening.

Intimidating and shocking, the exhibition shows Mutu’s divine ability to combine the grotesque with something beautiful. The accumulated incorporation of conflicting elements is what makes her artworks stand out among other contemporary artists. (ATS)

Until August 14, Museum of Contemporary Art, 140 George Street, The Rocks, Free, mca.com.au

BY ALEXIS TALBOT-SMITH