Wangechi Mutu

Wangechi Mutu makes hybrid female figures — collaged from medical illustrations, fashion magazines, mineral images, glitter, soil — that read as both archaeological objects and Afro-futurist envoys. The bodies are part-mythological, part-prosthetic; they look like they’ve survived something.

She moves between media: collage on Mylar, watercolour, soil-based painting, large bronze sculpture. The 2019 *Seated I–IV* on the Met’s façade — four monumental seated bronze figures replacing the empty plinths — read like the building had finally got its caryatids right.

She lives and works between New York and Nairobi, is represented by Gladstone Gallery, and was the inaugural commission of the Met Façade Commission programme.