A thumb pushes on teeth. There are jeweled eyes, misplaced lips and masks of black glitter. One wall is damaged, disturbing the gallery’s white space. Such is the work of Kenyan-born, New York–based artist Wangechi Mutu, on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario until May 23. Her exhibition, a combination of larger mixed-media collage, equally intricate smaller works, video and installation, exposes the complexity and falsity of the modern representational world, and is thus aptly titled This You Call Civilization?
Indeed, Mutu does anything but shy away from critiquing the modern gaze; rather, she focuses squarely on calling a spade a spade. And that spade is very often the oversexed, Orientalist (Africanist?) way the west looks at the African-American woman, the exaltation of consumerism and the role of technology (and its intersection with humanity) in the modern age.
Case in point: her Ark Collection, a set of postcard-sized collage pieces that juxtapose photographs of African women with the hypersexualized black female of the west, ripped from beauty and porn magazines. The result is arresting; I was left wondering how it could be that images clipped from such different sources can fit together in such a synchronistic way, yet still counter each other enough to prompt a dialogue about the different cultures represented in the pieces.
While feminists will surely adore and connect with Mutu’s pieces, there is more to her work than commentary on the African female. One of her Forensic Forms features a collage of a man with his head split open. The space between gives us an idea of what he’s thinking, as the following words are written: “If I had time to tell you how empty your culture has made me, I’d have to die inside my mind and hide where my body can’t be found.”
One of the best things about Mutu’s work is that it is accessible; you don’t have to have a PhD in art criticism to pick up what she’s putting down, quite literally, on paper. Therefore, there’s no need to be squeamish or shy. Find an empty hour and see for yourself: at the very least, you’ll give birth to that part of your mind that longs for artistic stimulation — and hopefully you won’t have to hide inside your body to get there.
Leanne Milech is a lawyer turned freelance writer. She reviews theatre, publishes children’s books and spends her free time hunting for Toronto’s best cultural escapes. Her column appears every Friday here on lawandstyle.ca.
Image:
Wangechi Mutu
This You Call Civilization?
2008, ink on Mylar, 228.6 x 152.4 cm.
Courtesy of the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Promised gift of George Hartman and Arlene Goldman, Toronto.
Photograph © Bill Orcutt