| Museums |
Page 2 of 6 Miami Art MuseumAmazing Grace. Wangechi MutuFrom Jul 22th through Oct 9th, 2005 MAM is amazing us once again with its exhibition program for the summer. The museum is hosting the first solo museum exhibition of Wangechi Mutu, Amazing Grace. Natural from Kenya but established in New York, the artist’s work combines collage and ink drawing to create flamboyantly distorted figures that reflect contemporary obsession with physical appearance. Her figures are assembled with surgical precision from images clipped from sources as diverse as glamour magazines, National Geographic publications, coffee table books on “classical” African art, wildlife journals, and motorcycle magazines. The exhibition is curated by Peter Boswell that performs as Assistant Director for Programs / Senior Curator at MAM.  Wangechi Mutu’s drawings recalls everything from body wounds to elaborately patterned fabrics. Her work “has dramatically extended the vocabulary of collage, one of the signature developments of the 20th-century art, - says Peter Boswell. “While most collage work emphasizes the clash of dissonant elements, Mutu seamlessly incorporates her collaged fragments with virtuoso passages of hand-drawn elements. The result is an elegant merging of printed and handmade materials.”With an environmental installation that combines large scale drawings, a video projection and dripping bottles, Amazing Grace is an extended meditation on the slave trade and the travails of displaced populations in South Florida and elsewhere. The installation interweaves images of figures, mangroves and the sea, with a recording of the artist herself singing the popular hymn Amazing Grace in a variety of different languages. The hymn was written by John Newton, an 18th-century slave trader who eventually became a minister in the Church of England and a dedicated abolitionist. “The important thing for me about Amazing Grace, which I’ve been obsessed with and researched thoroughly, - says Mutu, “is that it is rooted in the mud and injustices of a dark, convoluted past and yet it has become the most redemptive and ubiquitous of hymns ever...thanks to colonization, missionaries and the translation of the song into every imaginable language.” With Amazing Grace exhibition, Wangechi Mutu explores migration and slavery from a very different perspective. By arranging a complex set of meanings, the artist is posing a powerful statement that goes beyond the interpretations of tragedy and suffering traditionally associated with such themes, especially in America . The hymn that gives name to the exhibition also functions as a “chant” that empowers the beauty and true spirit of the historical phenomena and the significance of the African legacy to the west. Miami Art Museum 101 West Flagler St Miami, FL 33130 305.375.3000 |
