In The End, Where All began, EdEN, Wangechi Mutu presents a cosmological installation that re-images the Garden of Eden, inspired by the origin story of her ancestral people and filtered through an eco-feminist, African diasporic lens. The animated film Mumbi wa Mumbi focuses on Kirinyaga (the Kikuyu name for Mount Kenya), where Ngai (God) is said to have created the first man and woman. The kinetic work Sweeper employs a huge broom made of tree branches and human hair to move red earth and coffee grounds into concentric circles, as if tending a cosmic garden. MothersMound, a large hummock in the form of a pregnant belly and breasts, is inspired by Makonde plate masks, a metaphor for the endurance and beauty of motherhood, and more broadly, of feminine power. Tactile sculptures made of Kenyan earth, sticks, cow horns, paper books, quartz crystals and other natural materials fill out the installation.
Mutu’s hybrid creatures and ecologies, and her female-focused creation mythology, are acts of African, feminist resistance and restoration. The bronze sculpture SimbiSiren is her latest iteration of aquatic creatures that fuse woman, animal and the supernatural. The title refers to a Kongo freshwater guardian spirit who mediates between the living and ancestral worlds.
—Trevor Schoonmaker
