Top 33 Wangechi Mutu Quotes

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

We have to redefine what we mean when we say, ‘Who are your people?’ ‘Where are you from?’

I’m not a documentarian. I’m not a photojournalist.

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.

Often, there’s an emphasis in my work, and it’s sort of the celebrating of the body.

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.

I do all I can to make my world a better place to live in for me and for my kids as well.

Equal rights for women and queer folks!

My works tends to be erotic.

There are ways to speak that can transform things, which has less to do with authority but is more about resourcefulness and ingenuity.

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.

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.

If something hurtful enters your body, you create something beautiful to protect yourself from it. That’s my philosophy.

I’m big into multifunctional clothing.

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 feel that art is beyond language.

When I’m making a collage, there are a lot of things about it that are violent.

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 am inspired and affected by Aspen, the light and the landscape and the natural world.

I really believe in dreaming and making things from nothing.

I’ve always been curious about the things that I’m afraid to look at, that make me embarrassed or bother me.

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.

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.

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.

I hope my kids see imagination has power to change everything.

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.