Wangechi Mutu: WaterSpirit washed Pelican (2022)

Phaidon and Artspace are proud to present a new limited edition print by world-renowned contemporary artist Wangechi Mutu, released in tandem with the artist’s new Contemporary Artist Series monograph

Print: Lithograph, collage, and mica on archival pigment print
7 1/2 x 11 in (19.1 x 27.9 cm)
Edition of 60
Signed and numbered by the artist on recto

Entitled WaterSpirit washed Pelican, the limited edition of only 60 prints features layered lithography, collage, and mica embellishments, adding dimension and depth to a nuanced, lyrical, and fantastical composition characteristic of Mutu’s singular style. Each print comes with a signed and numbered copy of Phaidon’s 2023 monograph Wangechi Mutu.

Wangechi Mutu's remarkable body of work touches on such issues as sexuality, ecology, politics, and the rhythms and chaos that govern the world. Her boldly imaginative paintings, sculptures, and collages, often enriched with culturally-charged materials including tea, synthetic hair, Kenyan soil, feathers, and sand, interweave fact with fiction, generating a unique form of myth-making that sets her apart from classical history or popular culture. WaterSpirit washed Pelican employs a found image from a pre-existing pelican illustration which becomes transformed by Mutu’s ingenious interventions.

“Working with older prints and found materials is a kind of archaeography, a re-discovery, and re-naming of an image. It's my way to conjure up something from the past that can return to tell me something or remind me what I've forgotten.” —Wangechi Mutu

Mutu’s works are currently featured in the group show A Gateway to Possible Worlds: Art & Science-fiction at Centre Pompidou-Metz, Paris, France until April 2023. In 2019, the artist was featured in the Whitney Biennial and was commissioned to create sculptures for The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Fifth Avenue façade niches – the first-ever such installation on Met Museum's historic exterior – inaugurating a new annual series. TIME recently named the artist one of its ‘28 Outstanding Women’.