Wangechi Mutu, WaterSpirit washed Pelican (limited edition signed print, and separate lt ed signed monograph in bespoke archival gift box), 2022

Wangechi Mutu

WaterSpirit washed Pelican (limited edition signed print, and separate lt ed signed monograph in bespoke archival gift box), 2022

Lithograph, collage, and mica on archival pigment print, accompanied by Limited Edition hand signed monograph, in bespoke archival gift box

Pencil signed, dated and numbered by Wangechi Mutu on the lower right front

7 1/2 × 11 inches

Unframed

This hand signed and numbered, limited edition of only 60 prints features layered lithography, collage, and mica embellishments, adding dimension and depth to a nuanced, lyrical, and fantastical composition characteristic of Mutu’s singular style. The print is accompanied signed and numbered copy of Phaidon’s 2023 monograph Wangechi Mutu .

Measurements:
Print:
7.5 x 11 inches
Book:
11.75 x 10.5 x 1 inches
Box:
15 x 13 x 2 inches

Wangechi Mutu's remarkable body of work touches on such issues as sexuality, ecology, politics, and the rhythms and chaos that govern the world. Her boldly imaginative paintings, sculptures, and collages, often enriched with culturally-charged materials including tea, synthetic hair, Kenyan soil, feathers, and sand, interweave fact with fiction, generating a unique form of myth-making that sets her apart from classical history or popular culture. WaterSpirit washed Pelican employs a found image from a pre-existing pelican illustration which becomes transformed by Mutu’s ingenious interventions.

“Working with older prints and found materials is a kind of archaeography, a re-discovery, and re-naming of an image. It's my way to conjure up something from the past that can return to tell me something or remind me what I've forgotten.” —Wangechi Mutu

Mutu’s works were featured in the group show A Gateway to Possible Worlds: Art & Science-fiction at Centre Pompidou-Metz, Paris, France until April 2023. In 2019, the artist was featured in the Whitney Biennial and was commissioned to create sculptures for The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Fifth Avenue façade niches – the first-ever such installation on Met Museum's historic exterior – inaugurating a new annual series. TIME recently named the artist one of its ‘28 Outstanding Women’.

ABOUT WANGECHI MUTU

Wangechi Mutu's work deals with the very idea of human representation; how we perceive and reproduce images of what we think we are, how we view others, and create images of what we think of them. In her ongoing conversations with figuration, what Mutu’s work looks at our value systems in Art and beyond, that either obscure or elevate our image and reflections.

Internationally renowned for a practice that encompasses various techniques and mediums including sculpture, film, installation, and collages, Wangechi Mutu’s work feature female hybrid creatures and vivid dystopian dreamscapes.

Mutu has participated in several major solo exhibitions in institutions worldwide, most recently “Wangechi Mutu” at Storm King Art Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art “The Façade Commission: Wangechi Mutu, The NewOnes, will free Us” and at The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Legion of Honor Museum “Wangechi Mutu: I Am Speaking, Are You listening?”.