134
T
HE STAR OF Wangechi Mutu: I Am Speaking, Are You Listening?, an
exhibition slated to open at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor museum
this spring, may be MamaRay. The 12-foot-wide bronze, weighing
roughly a ton, fuses the figure of a manta ray, fins outspread, with that
of a humanoid goddess and will rise fearsomely in the museum’s court-
yard. Some of its features are based on those of a breaching whale.
For Wangechi Mutu, the Kenyan-American artist who created it, integrating East
African culture is a vital element of the piece. The figure’s long tail and back are
studded with ornamentation that refers to the armored shields of the Oromo peo-
ple, which are traditionally made of hippopotamus skin. The mysterious work is the
result of techniques that Mutu, 48, has perfected over decades. “Things that I react
to strongly, I don’t question,” she says on a phone call from her studio in Nairobi,
Kenya. “I just go for them. I don’t ask, ‘Why am I attracted to you?’”
Her large, sleek workspace, designed by the Nairobi firm Studio Propolis and
made mostly of concrete, sits on the same property as the home she shares with
her consultant husband and two daughters, ages 8 and 12. The white-walled, high-
ceilinged studio has ample north-facing sun, courtesy of a jagged roofline, with each
sawtooth shape creating a skylight.
“Finally, at this point in my life, I felt I could give myself my dream studio,”
says Mutu of the space, which was completed last March, just before coronavirus
lockdowns began. “I wanted a space that was good for looking at work,” she adds
of the light-filled rooms, which were built near her old studio. “I could never see
what I was doing.”
The studio’s high ceilings help with airflow—it has no air conditioning, at her
request—and the terrazzo floors keep things cool; the artist also likes them because
they’re “glimmery.” The quality of the finished building also allows flexibility in the
future: “It could someday be turned into a place for showing art, if I wanted.”
Mutu was born and raised in Nairobi and later lived
in New York City; she has split her time between the
two since 2016. Midway during the call she casually
mentions that she’s been working the whole time, her
version of off handed doodling. “I’m sculpting right
now,” she says of an egg-shaped head in putty that will
go into a future piece.
Nearly all of Mutu’s works begin with drawing, butWORKS IN PROGRESS
Mutu in her Nairobi
studio, in front of two
unfinished water-
colors. “I’m going to get
back to them,” she says,
adding of the iguana,
“He guards that corner.”BY TED LOOS
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GUILLAUME BONNWangechi Mutu created an airy, light-filled
studio in Nairobi, where work for a majornew exhibition—a surprising interventionist
installation—has taken shape.