Shoe Shoe
Shoe Shoe, is a short black and white clip reminiscent of CCTV footage, and captures the artist dressed as a vagrant and pushing a cart filled with shoes down the street, occasionally chucking them two at a time into the air. “I also love shoes. If I can find a way to use them I will,” Mutu told me by phone.
“We may think we have no power or voice and are completely lacking in space to say what we need to say. [But] there’s creativity in protest; there’s something courageous in throwing a shoe,” she said.
Both performances were directly inspired by a 2008 incident in Iraq where a reporter threw his shoes in anger at President George W. Bush during a press conference. The act of throwing, Mutu said, varies depending on the social context: in some cases, it is used in defiant protest, and in others the intent is malicious and violent, such as with stoning.
“I did come out of it with a lot of adrenaline. It really gets the heart and mind pumping, carrying a 20 pound basket full of pulp,” she said. “Honestly, I wish I could have carried more.”
“We may think we have no power or voice and are completely lacking in space to say what we need to say. [But] there’s creativity in protest; there’s something courageous in throwing a shoe,” she said.
Both performances were directly inspired by a 2008 incident in Iraq where a reporter threw his shoes in anger at President George W. Bush during a press conference. The act of throwing, Mutu said, varies depending on the social context: in some cases, it is used in defiant protest, and in others the intent is malicious and violent, such as with stoning.
“I did come out of it with a lot of adrenaline. It really gets the heart and mind pumping, carrying a 20 pound basket full of pulp,” she said. “Honestly, I wish I could have carried more.”
Amazing Grace
Amazing Grace depicts Mutu walking slowly into the ocean while singing the Christian hymn “Amazing Grace” in her native Kenyan language Kikuyu. Referred to by Schoonmaker as a “meditation on the African slave trade and the travails of displaced populations,” the haunting sounds of Amazing Grace echo throughout the exhibition space (23). Presented to viewers on a flat-screen digital television hidden behind a felt blanket-lined wall, the 7:09 excerpt of the 59-minute Amazing Grace is a digital file that plays on an external hard drive connected directly to the television screen.
Cutting
Cutting (2004) really came out of an intense frustration; I was in a moment when I found myself geographically out of my comfort zone. I had left Kenya and had moved from New York to San Antonio, Texas, for an artist residency at Artpace. It was the middle of the Bush era, and I remember looking at Texas and thinking, “This is the source of a lot of these issues that are coming out of this leadership.” After a few weeks of research and thinking, “Why am I here, how do I inspire myself in a place that gives me nightmares?” I decided that this issue was universal. The lack of humanity, this refusal to address issues through diplomacy, through regarding the problem, rather than just jumping into war without thinking or pausing. I thought: What is it about me that could possibly be like this issue? Instead of pointing the finger, how about I decide to be the perpetrator? When I enacted this cutting piece I was thinking about Rwanda, about women’s work and the connection and confusion between the weapon and the farmer’s tool, especially in Africa and Rwanda, where there were hardly any guns used — mainly machetes, knives, pangas and clubs. It was such a personal massacre and was so close to home, and I wondered what would turn people to do this kind of thing? It said to me: First, this kind of thing could happen anywhere. Secondly, it is easy for you to want to be in the position of the killer, of the persecutor. Cutting came easy for me. I was trying to cut a pile of wood and the sun was setting and so we were tackling this issue of time and light and sound. I was getting very tired and exhausted, and the image I captured for cutting, which was a six-minute piece, was the very end, where the pure exhaustion had gotten me and my knife got caught in a piece of wood. What happens for me in collage is I am able to separate myself and sort of mediate through the process of thinking about these issues that are important to me — issues of beauty, violence, politics, spirituality, etc.
I find it interesting how Mutu implements the political in her work. The three pieces are very different, Amazing Grace has a calm, stillness to it while Cutting is in a state of meditative violence, and Shoe Shoe has angry action. All three have an underlying anger or hint to a violent history.
ReplyDeleteSimple materials and gestures but emotional poetic pieces.
DeleteMutu deals with the idea of politics and protest in different ways. Mutu’s use of sound and settings really enhances her piece. You can sense the aggression or motivation in the sounds of the shoes hitting the floor and the cutting of the wood. The video of her singing “Amazing Grace” is very elegant with a sad tone, as she travels along the beach.
ReplyDeleteMutu presents politics and social protest in a performative and poetic way. The environments she is in along with the sounds, all come together to directly deliver the message she is intending. I found it interesting in her piece Cutting, how she notes her personal experience of moving to Texas was a frustrating one and connecting that anger to the anger she felt with the current state of politics at that time. All three of her works deal with some form of frustration and violence due to politics and history, yet she performs with a softness and poetically.
ReplyDeleteWangechi Mutu’s work focuses on issues such as protests, politics, personal life/background, violence, brutality, beauty, and spirituality. Cutting is an interesting piece focusing on how an issue is not personal but universal and how one can separate ones self by a process of thinking and/or creating. The auditory elements also give the artists pieces a deeper sense of meaning.
ReplyDeleteYes, what does audio do?
DeleteThe reason I love to watch video work is it can bring us a lot of different feelings. It might be blend visually, but the sound is something. I loved the first video which this woman throwing the shoes. She looks pretty upset and aggressive; the sound brought me this chaos and anxiety feelings. My thought of the video was maybe she is homeless or have this negative minds of society so expressing her anger. I think it's very strong.
ReplyDeleteThere is a bit of a description below the video that discusses some of these ideas.
DeleteMutu’s performances seem to be personal explorations into an experience so as to embody emotion and physicality. These experiences seem to enable her to objectively analyze what the performances, experiences, and actions taken mean for her personally and possibly spiritually. The variability in her work is dispersed. In each one of the performances she projects narrative and meaning in to for the documentation and sharing process. Her work in these three approaches seems most analogous to Kimsooja approach to performance. To in a sense become part of a landscape or a sculptural object that experiences the process of being. Her work can be interpreted as political, violent, spiritual, and even beautiful.
ReplyDeleteYes and passing through different spaces and activating them with her presence.
DeleteMutu's performances each are very different in style yet all have an underlying issue around protest and political purposes. In the "Shoe Shoe" piece she interacts more with the camera as in "Amazing Grace" and "Cutting" she is more in her own world. All pieces are very powerful each in their own way and convey a range of emotions.
ReplyDeleteGood observations.
ReplyDelete