Wangechi Mutu, Preying Mantra, 2006



This piece by Wangechi Mutu is all about taking back the African female form from these racist, sexist ideals that have haunted black women for hundreds of years. In previous artworks, we have seen how black women are depicted as sexual, unintelligent, secondary characters. They are rarely the subject matter, and if they are it’s over-sexualized, over-exaggerated, and displayed as exotic erotica. What Wangechi Mutu does in this piece is she combines all these ideas, as well as a nod to classical paintings, to depict not a nude woman, but the injustices done in the oppressive colonization of Africa by European nations. First, we see and abstracted woman lying in a classical pose on top of Kuba cloth, which is native to Kenya, where Mutu was born. It’s full of symbology, there’s trees, which are a part of those people’s creation story as well as many others around the world. There’s also a serpent, which we see a lot in classical art usually in reference to sin associated with the Biblical eve. The title, Preying Mantra suggests that this woman is powerful because preying mantises eat their mates, and a mantra is a verse that is used to help Hindus and Buddhists meditate.









https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/global-contemporary/a/wangechi-mutu-preying-mantra

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