Rivera, Adrienne Weekly Selfie 6

Adrienne Rivera, Foundations, 2024

Wangechi Mutu Dresses Cultural Critique in Freakishly Beautiful Disguises

“The artist doesn’t deny that there is a feminist quality to her work (she was included in the 2007 “Global Feminisms” show at the Brooklyn Museum), though she believes that the approach can be limiting when “there are so many political issues in other spheres of society,” Mutu says. As she puts it, “The art world is not where true urgency exists.””

I wonder what exactly she means by “the art world is not where true urgency exists” because I feel oftentimes it helps to create that urgency and draw attention “…to other political issues in other sphere of society,” as she says herself. Even her own work is regarded for this grotesque, I also believe her work is preserving much of today for the future in its own way. Oftentimes, we can also get really specific and address new categories that don’t get recognition. For example, I have always felt that children are a marginalized group of people, some of the most vulnerable members of society who are often not able to exert their rights to the fullest. & through art for me was how I started to make these connections from a young age. 

“Because of her figures’ ultimate other­worldly manifestations, it was most surprising to see that they begin as rather classical drawings before they are reworked, manipulated, amputated, ornamented and otherwise transformed.”

I find this also very interesting because I think I did follow a traditional or classical way of doing my portraiture without inviting much of the abstraction and chaos. While my portrait collage touches on grotesque themes, their arrangements are set out to tell a story rather than for transformation I realized. But, something powerful about being able to transform and cut pieces into something else, is that it almost is alchemy. It is a surgery of the story, something old to create something new to preserve the old, rather than just preserve as I feel my piece intended to do. This is the second project I have done recently that made me realize that I am a little afraid of cutting into pictures or changing too much of the original form, and maybe that is something to let go of and I am still exploring why this is through my art.