Color, Collage, Curiosity: Inspiration from Wangechi Mutu

Go to Wangechi Mutu's website and you'll see a picture of the back of a woman's head. The woman has braids, gathered in two coils and woven with blue fabric on the sides of her head. There's something visceral and unexpected about seeing someone's scalp and the back of their neck. They're not parts of the anatomy that we're trained to pay attention to. Stay long enough, and you'll see three clouds blossom, filled with swathes of color and texture.


And that's it. No menus, no pointer that changes into a hand when you hover over a clickable link. Your cursor has already changed into a brown hand with long, painted nails, wearing a kind of woven or knitted fingerless glove.


I won't give away the secret of the navigation menu. That would be going against the spirit of Mutu's website and her work–unexpected, colorful, thoughtful–both of which encourage you to take your time.


Vivid, visceral compositions using elements of sculpture and collage, Mutu's work makes me think about what it means to exist with everything that inhabits this world. Mutu spends a lot of time doing that as well. Born in Kenya, educated in Wales and the US, and currently working in New York, Mutu started Africa's Out! last year, "a bold loudspeaker and a groundbreaking proponent for gender and sexuality equality that calls for radical change through 'Imaginative Activism', creative brilliance, and new effective methods of articulation."

Take a look at some of these works by Mutu, and think about her methods of articulation:

Automatic Hip
(source)

(source)

Forbidden Fruit Picker
(source)

Ghost Children
(source)

Look Before You Swallow
(source)

Our Eyes Were Watching
(source)

Primal Glare
(source)

Sleeping Sickness Saved Me
(source)

You Are My Sunshine
(source)

The Prompt

Now pick a work that inspired you most (or, if you're feeling especially inspired, pick all of them!), and incorporate elements from it into a poem. Is a certain color particularly prevalent? Movement? A gesture? A mood? Collage? Honestly, in most of Mutu's works, it's all of the above. If that seems overwhelming, pick one aspect to focus on. But, the more you can work with, the better. The subject is up to you, though you can draw inspiration about that from Mutu's works as well.


And, if you write something you're proud of, why not share it with us?

Read more of Rukmini's work on Floodmark.