An unprecedented dialogue between the bronze works of the American-Kenyan artist and the treasures of the Borghese Gallery, a temple of Renaissance beauty.
The title of this rich publication, published on the occasion of the solo exhibition of the Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu at the Galleria Borghese—the first time in the century-old history of the Villa for a living female artist—evokes the dual nature of Mutu's practice: poetic and mythological, yet deeply connected to contemporary social and material contexts. "Black soil"—rich and malleable under the rain, almost like clay—appears across multiple geographies, including the Secret Gardens of the Galleria, which resonate with the artist's imagination. From this soil, the sculptures seem to emerge, as if molded by a primordial force, giving shape to stories, myths, memories, and poems. The metaphor underscores the generative and transformative power of her work: rooted in materiality, yet open to multiple future interpretations.
Wangechi Mutu's intervention introduces a new vocabulary into the historical and symbolic architecture of the Galleria Borghese. Through sculpture, installation, and moving image, the artist proposes an innovative approach to the museum space—one that challenges hierarchy, permanence, and fixed meaning. Her works question the visual weight and authority of the collection through strategies of suspension, fluidity, and fragmentation. In doing so, the museum is no longer presented as a static container of objects, but as a living organism, in continuous transformation, shaped by loss, adaptation, and reconfiguration.
Accompanied by a text by curator Cloé Perrone analyzing the context and themes that informed the exhibition's conception, the volume is enriched by four additional essays by Adrienne Edwards, Ekow Eshun, Francesco Freddolini, and Ilaria Puri Purini, as well as a conversation between Eshun and the artist. A rich selection of illustrations allows the readers to retrace the exhibition, which unfolded in the Gallery's sumptuous rooms and gardens, all the way to its extramural presence at the American Academy.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Galleria Borghese, Rome, in 2025.
Wangechi Mutu (born 1972 in Nairobi, Kenya) is an artist and sculptor who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, associated with the Afrofuturist movement. Wangechi Mutu's work deals with the very idea of human representation; how we perceive and reproduce images of what we think we are, how we view others and create images of what we think of them. In her ongoing conversations with figuration, what Mutu's work looks at are value systems that either obscure or elevate our image and reflections. In her collage-paintings, sculptures, films and performance rituals, Mutu uses ink, soil, ash, bronze, driftwood, horn, pigments, wine, hair; ultimately keeping the figure as the focus, always seeking to find out more about who we are, what we mean to each other and why we recreate ourselves in Art. Mutu has participated in several major solo exhibitions in institutions worldwide, including Wangechi Mutu, The NewOnes, will free Us at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Wangechi Mutu: I Am Speaking, Are You Listening? at the Legion of Honor, San Francisco.
