Nguva na Nyoka

Nguva na Nyoka records the moment Wangechi Mutu left Mylar behind, and with it the translucent, floating look her collages had been known for, in favour of vinyl and linoleum grounds dense enough to carry soil, tea and hair.

Published by Victoria Miro in 2014 for the gallery's second Mutu exhibition, held at 16 Wharf Road, London, from 14 October to 19 December, the black cloth hardcover carries a text by the Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina and an essay by Adrienne Edwards. The title translates from Kiswahili as sirens and serpents, and the works reproduced draw on East African coastal mythologies of the nguva, or water woman, alongside gender and racial politics, Western popular culture and autobiography. Painterly passages sit against Mutu's cut-and-collaged figures, with batik fabric, synthetic hair, Kenyan soil, feathers and sand worked into the surfaces; the show also included video and sculpture.

Mutu (b. 1972, Nairobi) works between Nairobi and New York. Her hybrid female figures have since scaled up into bronze, most publicly the seated sentinels installed in the façade niches of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2019.