[Art&Design]

WANGECHI MUTU BRINGS "BLACK SOIL POEMS" TO GALLERIA BORGHESE

Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu becomes the first living female artist to exhibit at Rome's Galleria Borghese with "Black Soil Poems" exhibition.

Photo of Wangechi Mutu's upcoming exhibition "Black Soil Poems" at Galleria Borghese in Rome, running June-September 2025. It describes how Mutu, the first living female artist to exhibit at this venue, creates installations throughout the museum's interior, façade, and gardens. The article details her suspended sculptures, bronze works, and use of diverse materials that establish dialogue with the classical collection. It explains the exhibition's themes of transformation, ancestral memory, and alternative narratives, noting additional installations at the American Academy in Rome and FENDI's sponsorship.
Wangechi Mutu Ph. by Khadija Farah
Photo of Wangechi Mutu's upcoming exhibition "Black Soil Poems" at Galleria Borghese in Rome, running June-September 2025. It describes how Mutu, the first living female artist to exhibit at this venue, creates installations throughout the museum's interior, façade, and gardens. The article details her suspended sculptures, bronze works, and use of diverse materials that establish dialogue with the classical collection. It explains the exhibition's themes of transformation, ancestral memory, and alternative narratives, noting additional installations at the American Academy in Rome and FENDI's sponsorship.
courtesy of Galleria Borghese
Photo of Wangechi Mutu's upcoming exhibition "Black Soil Poems" at Galleria Borghese in Rome, running June-September 2025. It describes how Mutu, the first living female artist to exhibit at this venue, creates installations throughout the museum's interior, façade, and gardens. The article details her suspended sculptures, bronze works, and use of diverse materials that establish dialogue with the classical collection. It explains the exhibition's themes of transformation, ancestral memory, and alternative narratives, noting additional installations at the American Academy in Rome and FENDI's sponsorship.
courtesy of Galleria Borghese
Photo of Wangechi Mutu's upcoming exhibition "Black Soil Poems" at Galleria Borghese in Rome, running June-September 2025. It describes how Mutu, the first living female artist to exhibit at this venue, creates installations throughout the museum's interior, façade, and gardens. The article details her suspended sculptures, bronze works, and use of diverse materials that establish dialogue with the classical collection. It explains the exhibition's themes of transformation, ancestral memory, and alternative narratives, noting additional installations at the American Academy in Rome and FENDI's sponsorship.
courtesy of Galleria Borghese

A new exhibition at Rome's Galleria Borghese will feature works by Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu from June 10 to September 14, 2025. Titled "Black Soil Poems" and curated by Cloé Perrone, the exhibition marks a historic moment as Mutu becomes the first living female artist to exhibit at the prestigious institution.

The exhibition spans multiple spaces, including the museum's interior rooms, its façade, and the Secret Gardens, with an additional installation at the American Academy in Rome. Through sculpture, installation, and video work, Mutu establishes a dialogue between her contemporary artistic language and the museum's classical collection.

"Black Soil Poems" references the fertile material that appears in various geographies, including the museum's gardens. This rich, malleable soil serves as a metaphor for Mutu's creative process, from which her sculptures emerge as if shaped by primordial forces to embody stories, myths, and memories.

Inside the museum, Mutu reimagines spatial relationships through suspension and fragmentation. Works like "Ndege", "Suspended Playtime", and "First Weeping Head" and "Second Weeping Head" hang from ceilings, creating new visual perspectives without obscuring the permanent collection. This approach introduces alternative historical narratives and challenges traditional material hierarchies.

The exhibition employs diverse materials including bronze, wood, feathers, soil, paper, water, and wax. Bronze, typically associated with permanence in classical art, is recontextualized in Mutu's work as a vessel for ancestral memory and multiplicity.

Outside, the museum's façade and Secret Gardens host several bronze sculptures, including "The Seated I" and "The Seated IV", contemporary caryatids originally created for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2019. Other outdoor works include "Nyoka", "Heads in a Basket", "Musa" and "Water Woman", which introduce hybrid forms drawing from East African traditions and global cosmologies.

Sound plays a subtle but significant role throughout the exhibition, from the suspended rhythm in "Poems by my Great Grandmother I" to "Grains of War", which references lyrics from Bob Marley's song "WAR" and Haile Selassie's 1963 United Nations speech against racial injustice.

At the American Academy in Rome, visitors can view "Shavasana I", a bronze figure covered by a woven straw mat, named after the yoga "corpse pose" and inspired by a real-life incident. Its placement among ancient Roman funerary inscriptions amplifies themes of death, surrender, and dignity.

This exhibition continues Galleria Borghese's engagement with contemporary art, following recent exhibitions featuring Giuseppe Penone and Louise Bourgeois. "Black Soil Poems" is made possible with support from FENDI, the exhibition's official sponsor.

For more information, visitors can contact the museum directly or visit the website website.

Photo of Wangechi Mutu's upcoming exhibition "Black Soil Poems" at Galleria Borghese in Rome, running June-September 2025. It describes how Mutu, the first living female artist to exhibit at this venue, creates installations throughout the museum's interior, façade, and gardens. The article details her suspended sculptures, bronze works, and use of diverse materials that establish dialogue with the classical collection. It explains the exhibition's themes of transformation, ancestral memory, and alternative narratives, noting additional installations at the American Academy in Rome and FENDI's sponsorship.
courtesy of Galleria Borghese
Photo of Wangechi Mutu's upcoming exhibition "Black Soil Poems" at Galleria Borghese in Rome, running June-September 2025. It describes how Mutu, the first living female artist to exhibit at this venue, creates installations throughout the museum's interior, façade, and gardens. The article details her suspended sculptures, bronze works, and use of diverse materials that establish dialogue with the classical collection. It explains the exhibition's themes of transformation, ancestral memory, and alternative narratives, noting additional installations at the American Academy in Rome and FENDI's sponsorship.
courtesy of Galleria Borghese

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Andrea Darren

Andrea Darren

Born in Manchester, from a young age, she was passionate about art and design. She studied at the University of the Arts in London, where she developed her skills in these fields. Today, Andrea works as an editor for a renowned publishing house, combining her love for art and design with her editorial expertise.