Artist: Wangechi Mutu

Victoria Miro presentS The SeasSpirit, an exhibition of new collage-paintings by Wangechi Mutu.

Wangechi Mutu engages in a distinctive form of mythmaking, often connecting the human body with the natural world. For her forthcoming exhibition, the artist returns to the subject of water, a theme she has explored throughout her practice, not only as a mythical realm but also as a fragile, symbiotic ecosystem.

In a new series of collage-paintings, Mutu conjures a cast of feminine water spirits – figures that are at once powerful, awe-inspiring and unsettling. Imagined as protectors, companions and guides, these aquatic beings can be understood as symbolic inhabitants of both the sea and the subconscious. Created with Venice in mind, this body of work resonates with the city’s enigmatic character – a place where land and water, history and myth, continually converge.

Wangechi Mutu exhibits in the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys, curated by Koyo Kouoh (until 22 November 2026).

In The End, Where All began, EdEN, on view in the Giardini, Mutu presents a cosmological installation that reimagines the Garden of Eden, inspired by the origin story of her ancestral people and filtered through an eco-feminist, African diasporic lens.

The bronze sculpture SimbiSiren, on view in the Arsenale, is her latest iteration of aquatic creatures that fuse woman, animal and the supernatural. The title refers to a Kongo freshwater guardian spirit who mediates between the living and ancestral worlds.