Everything is deeply affected by the dominant culture. Consumerism is huge in the US. This is by far the wealthiest [nation], but also the biggest consumer in the world. Which means that a lot of things get used, a lot of things get wasted, and a lot of things get churned out in ways that are wasteful.
Wangechi MutuKenya is rapidly developing its industry and manufacturing, and its cultural identity as a new country. We had a humongous history pre-British, and when we were colonized and violently reshuffled, we had to decide who we were again. We couldn't rest on the stories and the cultures of our great-grandparents.
Wangechi MutuI'm not a policy maker. I'm not even a very great activist. My main thing is to make things that speak for the culture that I live in.
Wangechi MutuA lot of my work reflects the incredible influence that America has had on contemporary African culture. Some of it's insidious, some of it's innocuous, some of it's invisible. It's there.
Wangechi MutuWe became Homo sapiens not that long ago, from the scientific perspective, and we've retained a lot of our beast nature. We've done all these amazing things in terms of our knowledge base and technology, and now we're flying around and using the internet. But we're still very animalistic. So, I think about hierarchies. I think about evolution. I think about how we stack up, how we sit on top of each other. How we pray that we know what we're up to.
Wangechi Mutu