Art Talk: Lucina Ward on Wangechi Mutu’s The seated IV
Wangechi Mutu, The seated IV, 2019, Purchased in celebration of the National Gallery of Australia's 40th anniversary, 2022.
Join Lucina Ward, Senior Curator of International Art, for a floor talk on Wangechi Mutu’s The seated IV, 2019.
Mutu is a leader of Afrofuturism who uses the female body to explore questions of self-image, gender constructs, cultural trauma, and environmental destruction, as well as notions of beauty and power. Her work brings together ideas and images drawn from her Kenyan and broader African heritage, and her experience as a migrant, with references to Classical and Enlightenment concepts, popular culture, fashion and advertising.
The seated IV is a larger-than-life-sized female figure—one of four female figures produced for The NewOnes, will free us, a project at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art—and subsequently cast in a small edition. Historically, caryatids function as supports in Classical buildings. With this sculpture, Mutu considers what might happen if these female figures were released from their burdens.
The seated IV was purchased in celebration of the National Gallery of Australia's 40th anniversary in 2022 and is on display for the first time.
Duration: 45 minutes including Q&A
Free, bookings essential
