Revisit the haunting beauty of Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu’s This You Call Civilization?, a collage acquired by the AGO in 2009

Kenyan-American Wangechi Mutu is a globally recognized contemporary artist. Widely known for her collage-based works on Mylar and large-scale installations, Mutu also works across other media, including painting, drawing, sculpture and video. Born in 1972, she was raised in the suburbs of Nairobi, Kenya, later studying in both Wales at the United World College of the Atlantic and the U.S. at The Cooper Union and Yale University.

In 2009, Wangechi Mutu: This You Call Civilization? at the AGO was the first major exhibition of Mutu’s work in a North American art museum and it featured 16 key works including collages on Mylar, videos and installation.

Created specifically for the opening of Transformation AGO in 2009, This You Call Civilization? (2008), with its washes of watercolour, intricately placed magazine clippings and granular elements (like soil and glitter), creates an animalistic abstraction of the human form. Mutu strikes an unsettling balance between the beautiful and the grotesque—the long-legged, leopard-clad figure captures a hybridization between animal, human and machine. As if to allude to the piecing together of one’s cultural and racial identity, Mutu masterfully collages together magazine cuttings including lips, eyes, motorcycle wheels, manicured hands, feathers, leaves, high-heeled shoes and fruit.

Volunteers will love to revisit this 2010 video in which Mutu discusses the creative process behind This You Call Civilization? and the thematic complexities in her work: