Top 60 Quotes & Sayings by Wangechi Mutu
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu.
Last updated on September 19, 2024.
I believe art is a connection, like passing on a flame.
Beautiful things can happen when you act intuitively and instinctively in a moment of anxiety and do something radical.
My works tends to be erotic.
There's a recycling mentality about my work.
I would like to make work for my country, art which is innately Kenyan by being made in Kenya.
If I don't have an ability to go the places that I have been invited to show at and to speak at and to feature my talent, well then, I am going to stay here in New York City and work my butt off.
In 'National Geographic,' you always saw pictures of tribal Africa. And here I am, sitting in Nairobi in our suburban house, watching TV and thinking, 'Why is it always going to be these tribal people 'that are the ambassadors of our image?
I hope my kids see imagination has power to change everything.
I've always loved the idea that you think you know what you're looking at from a distance, yet when you come up close, it gets intricate and nutty and obscene and provocative.
I keep things moving along with a seriously loving, caring, and brilliant man, a fierce group of friends - and really strong coffee.
Football has that wonderful gift of being accessible. You don't need much gear, a coach, or a lifeguard. You just need your imagination, strong legs, and a couple of friends, and it's a game.
'Misguided Little Unforgivable Hierarchies' is a piece that I did around the time that I was very frustrated and angry with the fact that the U.S., where I live, had decided to pull itself into another war. I was really angry.
I do all I can to make my world a better place to live in for me and for my kids as well.
I love magazines because they're so dispensable, and they're so quickly consumed. In that way, they're quite honest. They're unashamed about how small an amount of time they're trying to keep our attention.
I think there is something about countries and nations that is hard to define. And, in fact, that's probably why we create such massive boundaries - because it's so slippery where they begin and where they end.
I'm big into multifunctional clothing.
Our interest is in showing that homophobia is not part of the agenda for a new Africa.
Often, there's an emphasis in my work, and it's sort of the celebrating of the body.
Some people get turned on by my work, and it sells, but what drives me is the process of making it.
I have this amateur side attraction to, and interest in, the sciences and biology and physics and evolution. Paleontology is of interest to me. I'm interested in the way these fields have helped us understand how we are human and why we are human.
I watched a lot of avant-garde films, like Maya Deren's work, and I love film's technical ability to do things that are impossible in real life. It's related to the way collage allows you to manipulate reality and the hierarchies that are inherent in our awful but amazing world.
I feel that art is beyond language.
The medium of film is really wonderful because it can behave in the same way as collage and painting; it can be layered and non-literal.
There are ways to speak that can transform things, which has less to do with authority but is more about resourcefulness and ingenuity.
I use femaleness as another lens, so I don't even think all my creatures are women; I just think that I bring out the femaleness in them.
While I was a student at The Cooper Union, they discouraged too much of a focus on any one medium, and it helped me try new and different things.
We have to redefine what we mean when we say, 'Who are your people?' 'Where are you from?'
Born Free is an idea that came from a place of deep respect for the delicate cycle of life. How incredible to be able to work with gifted designers who, as mothers, recognize what the devastating loss of a child could mean and how easily that loss can be avoided.
We became Homo sapiens not that long ago, from the scientific perspective, and we've retained a lot of our beast nature. We've done all these amazing things in terms of our knowledge base and technology, and now we're flying around and using the Internet. But we're still very animalistic.
Being taught to despise your body is being taught to perhaps admire someone else's body more than yours - being taught that your body is good for certain things and not for others.
I feel like I've spent a lot of time imagining home and thinking about a dream-like place, as opposed to a real place, because that's not what I was able to do, meaning go home or be home.
The ocean is the source of life. We all come from there. I think about these one-celled creatures, and I think about the planet. It is related to my obsession with biology, even if it's only a layperson's obsession. The way I visualise what's at the bottom of the ocean is very much to do with how I feel when I'm swimming in the sea.
When I'm making a collage, there are a lot of things about it that are violent.
I am inspired and affected by Aspen, the light and the landscape and the natural world.
I'm very much a person that believes that there's something that was introduced into Kenya and Africa as we know it that has made us despise our bodies.
Gold and precious gems are, in many places, the one form of wealth a woman can use to protect and enhance herself within the elaborate structure of patriarchy.
I am fascinated by these ocean-grown folks. On the coast, there's all this cross-pollination of ideas. Someone thinks they saw something. One person's madness is reiterated by another, and a story is born. The rumour becomes a substitute for news.
One of the things I'm interested in is not just women but the female qualities that are present in everyone.
So many a time, I would find myself stuck in my studio while, in another country, my exhibitions were opening and I was being celebrated.
I really believe in dreaming and making things from nothing.
If something hurtful enters your body, you create something beautiful to protect yourself from it. That's my philosophy.
For me, collages manage to - it satisfies all of my madness, like I'm able to make these obsessive things, but then I'm also able to make these very strong statements. I don't know what they mean to other people, but in my mind, they have a very strong particular resonance; there's sort of a power.
I juxtapose and slice up reality and fiction quite easily. I'm aware that it is up for grabs and a powerful tool to explain how we take control.
Motherhood is the ultimate call to sacrifice.
Equal rights for women and queer folks!
I'm not a documentarian. I'm not a photojournalist.
When certain things reach a tipping point, and you know people's lives are in danger, you have to decide that it's time to speak up, and you have to say something loud and clear.
My work is often a therapy for myself - a working out of these issues as a black woman. And a way of allowing other black women to work through this kind of stigmatization as they look through the images and feel how distorted or contorted they might be in the public eye.
I've always been curious about the things that I'm afraid to look at, that make me embarrassed or bother me.
We became Homo sapiens not that long ago, from the scientific perspective, and we've retained a lot of our beast nature. We've done all these amazing things in terms of our knowledge base and technology, and now we're flying around and using the internet. But we're still very animalistic. So, I think about hierarchies. I think about evolution. I think about how we stack up, how we sit on top of each other. How we pray that we know what we're up to.
A lot of my work reflects the incredible influence that America has had on contemporary African culture. Some of it's insidious, some of it's innocuous, some of it's invisible. It's there.
I have this amateur side attraction to, and interest in, the sciences and biology and physics and evolution. Paleontology is of interest to me. I'm interested in the way these fields have helped us understand how we are human and why we are human. I'm also from the area that is considered to be the cradle of mankind.
And luckily, for whatever reason, I've found people who are interested in living with and owning and existing around the DNA of my mind, which is my visual work. I've found collectors who are willing to put money down to live with my work. So I can't criticize the whole mechanism. But I can criticize it as an artist, in spite of the fact that I benefit from it. And there are problems with it.
What is Africa, anyway? Even I don't know what Africa is, entirely. But I know that it's not some of these simplified sound bites you hear in America.
Always acknowledge your position in the food chain... They eat because you grow the food.
Females carry the marks, language and nuances of their culture more than the male. Anything that is desired or despised is always placed on the female body.
In most cases I start off with a sketch. But I'm also thinking about real images: out of National Geographic, out of fashion magazines, out of The Economist, out of Time. I'm making a sketch, but I'm using the existing images that have been put out in the world.
I'm not a policy maker. I'm not even a very great activist. My main thing is to make things that speak for the culture that I live in.
Everything is deeply affected by the dominant culture. Consumerism is huge in the US. This is by far the wealthiest [nation], but also the biggest consumer in the world. Which means that a lot of things get used, a lot of things get wasted, and a lot of things get churned out in ways that are wasteful.
Kenya is rapidly developing its industry and manufacturing, and its cultural identity as a new country. We had a humongous history pre-British, and when we were colonized and violently reshuffled, we had to decide who we were again. We couldn't rest on the stories and the cultures of our great-grandparents.
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