Chorus Line,

2008

Trained in both art and cultural anthropology, Wangechi Mutu explores the fantasies and fears that attach themselves to women and people of color. Mutu is known primarily for exquisite, meticulously rendered collages such as <em>Chorus Line</em>, an amalgamation of watercolor and found photographs sampled from fashion, scientific, and ethnographic magazines. The female form found in each of these eight collages has been subjected to considerable deformation, an effect that suggests violent abuse as well as exuberant jubilation. In addition to the Neolithic sculpture <em>Venus of Willendorf</em>, Mutu’s voluptuous, distended bodies are also modeled on that of Saartjie Baartman, an enslaved Khoikhoi woman from an area in today’s South Africa whose owner subjected her to humiliating public display throughout Europe from 1810 until her death in 1815.