WEBVTT

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(water running)

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I soak all the wood.
I actually clean it all.

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Just so it's as smooth

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and usable as possible, you know?

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It's got a little baby slug in it, see?

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I think I've always been
a city girl with a nature brain.

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I've always loved animals,
and plants, and insects.

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[Wangechi Mutu: Between the Earth and the Sky]

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(light violin music)

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Nature has entered my work,

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where I've been able to integrate

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my love and interest for
how little organisms behave

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into these larger themes.

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I want to make work
that sits within nature,

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sits under the sky, and the sun,
and the rain, and the wind.

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--All cleaned up.

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(violin music continues)

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[Wangechi Mutu Studio, Nairobi, Kenya]

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(clanking)

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(mechanical whirring)

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(clanking)

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I have a bird on top of
the head of this sentinel.

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--Yeah.

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(man murmurs inaudibly)

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--I've put nails in,

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--but then I had to tape it
because actually

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--some of them are pretty short.

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--I'm wondering if you can epoxy these in,

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--and then what I'll do is I'll fill in.

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--This is actually fine.

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(mechanical whirring, drill like sound)

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I'm generally a multitasking being.

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That's how I've always done things.

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There's always been a little bit of this,

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a little bit of that,
a little bit of this,

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everywhere there's something going on.

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(light piano music)

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When I'm sculpting or when I'm painting,

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there's always something that's damp.

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So drying is a big part of the work.

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I have to sort of time
all of those things.

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Sometimes a three-dimensional piece

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will completely influence

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how I end up working on
a two-dimensional piece.

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There's a lot of osmosis
and learning from my work.

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(tapping)

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(light piano music continues)

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(birds chirp)

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My earliest childhood memories
are in this one particular

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area that we lived in called Woodley.

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Lived in a little bungalow.

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So you have one floor,

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have a garden around.

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I remember playing in the garden.

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I remember the dry grass.

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We did a lot of
playing with our toys

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in sections of the garden
that we weren't supposed to.

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We got very dirty in the garden.

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It was a bit of a wild space.

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Those memories have made
an impact on how I work.

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(birds chirping)

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I went to a Catholic school,
and we were all girls.

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I was surrounded by women,

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women teachers,

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women students,

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the Virgin Mary,

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all kinds of feminine energy.

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And because I think of it as
such a massively universal

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part of humanity,

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I'm able to keep pulling from it.

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It's an eternal source
of inspiration for me.

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(light violin music)

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["The NewOnes, will free Us" (2019),
The Metropolitan Museum of Art]

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The way we worship the image of the woman

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but denigrate the actual
human being of woman,

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that schism bothers me,

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and it's obviously something
that has plagued us

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for a long, long time.

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So that's what I'm looking for.

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(violin music continues,
and a harp plays too)

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["Sentinels"]

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The "Sentinels" are this regal figure,

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who is standing,

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representing a female

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divine, feminine form.

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I want to make sure that
she is absolutely stable,

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that she is able to stand.

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I realized they look like these soldiers,

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like they were guarding me, or us--

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guarding language,

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guarding the earth that they're made from.

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So I call them "Sentinels."

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Growing up in Kenya, during
the seventies and eighties,

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you're learning British
geography, European history,

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we had not touched on African literature.

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We hadn't even looked at our own histories

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and our own heritage and culture,

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because a lot of Kenyans
are so Christianized.

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There isn't one particular
way of seeing things.

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And in fact,

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when there is a singular
voice or singular story,

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it tends to be domineering,

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problematic, and often fictional.

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You know,

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there's no way that can be one way to tell

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the whole story.

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I wanted to be able to say

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"These are the places I come from,"

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"these are the people we come from."

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So I decided to apply to art school.

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I had to aim for the moon,

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so I applied to schools in New York.

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(quick tempo music)

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Collage, first and foremost,
was the most accessible

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and impactful way for me to work.

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All the tools and supplies
that I was afforded

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by being in a big fancy
university were gone.

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I was deeply invested in
becoming a serious artist,

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but I didn't have the means,

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so I started painting with watercolors.

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Working with really, really
wet and fluid materials,

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there's always a surprise.

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(quick tempo music continues)

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But I also realized that
there was this added tension

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that I was looking for.

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I would mix things from
a wildlife magazine,

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or some fashion magazine,
or vintage illustration.

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I would mix that with my watercolors,

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and I loved the fact that I had grafted
and brought them together,

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and now you had to read
it for what it was.

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(piano music)

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The collages developed and grew larger.

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And I think at that point,

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I was really thinking about
the history of photography,

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and how photography and
colonization grew in impact

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in a very similar way--

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and how we photographed the "other."

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The "other" was photographed,
and packaged, and consumed.

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Seeing yourself represented that way

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impacted you as a colonized "other,"

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and how your image essentially
became who you were.

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(violin music)

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The currency that
photography has afforded me

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is extremely important.

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I don't think it's something
I've been able to articulate,

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but it's always paintings
that have photography

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dancing behind them.

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(violin music continues)

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Combining humans and animals,

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it's as old as the human mind.

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(different strings music)

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"Crocodylus" was this hybrid

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between a woman and a powerful animal.

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[Gladstone Gallery, New York City]

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We've always admired certain
creatures for their elegance

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and their enormous strength.

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One of the first things that we ever did

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is look at some creature and go,
"Oh my gosh,"

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"I wish that had that speed,
or that power,"

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"or the stealth, or the courage."

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(different string music continues)

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"MamaRay" is a woman who is a veil,

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an ocean herself,

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a shield,

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and a ray.

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I was very interested
in the marks

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that draw us to look at something.

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Texture produces shadow, and
tone, and light, and rhythm,

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and provokes us to look
longer at something.

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All my foundational teaching
and work was in New York.

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Once I began exhibiting, my base was there

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so it made sense to be there.

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But then for the longest time,

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I wasn't able to travel
back and forth

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between Nairobi and New York.

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And for those years,

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I struggled with
my perception of home.

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(soft music)

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I realized, "Okay,"

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"this is the secret to a certain way"

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"that I've been trying to work and think,"

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which is to be able to compare

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and look at myself

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from one place

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where this as a backdrop from the other,

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with that as a backdrop,

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and then combine that understanding.

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(soft music continues)

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(birds chirping)

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(machine whirring)

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The soil has become important
for me in this Nairobi studio,

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because I actually identify with the soil.

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It's the soil that
I remember from my childhood--

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the color of the soil,

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the feeling of the soil, the texture,

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the way it behaves when
it's dry, when it's wet,

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when it rains.

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In New York, I don't feel that
same sense of identification

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with the soil there.

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I don't trust the soil;

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I always think that there's
other things going on

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in the soil that I haven't put in

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and weren't put in there in
the first place by nature.

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So there's this distance
between me and the ground.

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Whereas here, I tend to
immediately want to capture

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the essence of the soil,
the malleability, the color,

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the crispiness, the granular aspects.

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All of those things are
important for me in the work.

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I truly believe that
there's something about

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taking these bits and
pieces of trees and animals

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and completely anonymous,

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but extremely identifiable items,

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and placing them somewhere
that draws their energy.

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Whatever they were coming from,

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whatever they did,

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whatever molten lava they came
out of a million years ago,

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that is now in my work.

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And that little piece
of energy is magnified.

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(soft music continues)

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I'm trying to just push up
the volume on how incredibly

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important every single plant
and animal and human is

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in keeping us all alive and afloat.

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That's how I look at things
when I'm in the studio.

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When I feel like I'm really
having fun and playing,

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there's fear in it.

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The suspicion of things being found,

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all of that,

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when that enters into the work,

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that's when I'm in my absolute mode.

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(music builds)