From June 10 to September 14, 2025,<\/b>\u00a0Galleria Borghese presents, for the first time within the residence of Cardinal Scipione, a solo exhibition by Kenyan-American artist\u00a0Wangechi Mutu<\/b>, titled\u00a0Black Soil Poems<\/i><\/b>, curated by Clo\u00e9 Perrone. Like the recently concluded exhibition dedicated to the Baroque poet Giovan Battista Marino, this project also stems from the museum\u2019s ongoing interest in poetry. Conceived as a site-specific intervention, it unfolds throughout the museum\u2019s interior galleries, its fa\u00e7ade, and the Secret Gardens. It challenges classical tradition through suspensions, fragmented forms, and newly imagined mythologies, establishing a multilayered dialogue between the artist\u2019s contemporary language and the symbolic institutional authority.<\/p>\n
The title evokes the dual nature of\u00a0Mutu\u2019s practice: poetic and mythological, yet deeply connected to contemporary social and material contexts<\/b>. “Black soil” \u2014 rich and malleable under the rain, almost like clay \u2014 appears across multiple geographies, including the Secret Gardens of the Galleria Borghese, which resonate with the artist\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Wangechi Mutu’s intervention introduces a new vocabulary into the historical and symbolic architecture of the Galleria Borghese.\u00a0Through sculpture, installation, and moving image, the artist proposes an innovative approach to the museum space \u2014 one that challenges hierarchy, permanence, and fixed meaning.<\/b>\u00a0Her 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\u00a0living organism, in continuous transformation<\/b>, shaped by loss, adaptation, and reconfiguration.<\/p>\n
The exhibition is structured in two complementary sections. Inside the museum, Mutu radically reconsiders spatial orientation:\u00a0her sculptures never obscure the Borghese collection; rather, appear as subtle additions\u00a0<\/b>\u2014 ethereal presences that hover in the air, float lightly, or rest on horizontal surfaces. Works such as\u00a0Ndege<\/i>,\u00a0Suspended Playtime<\/i>,\u00a0First Weeping Head<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Second Weeping Head<\/i>\u00a0defy gravitational logic, delicately hanging from the ceilings and framing new lines of sight. This act of suspension is not merely formal: it introduces a shift of historical narratives and material hierarchies.\u00a0The museum\u2019s visual field is redrawn, opening new modes of perception to our gaze.<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n
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The materials \u2014 bronze, wood, feathers, soil, paper, water and wax \u2014 are central to the exhibition\u2019s ethos. Bronze in particular is stripped of its traditional connotations to become a vessel of ancestral memory, of recovery, and of multiplicity.\u00a0By inserting organic, fluid, and mutable substances into a context traditionally dominated by marble, stucco, and gilded surfaces<\/b>, the artist reaffirms a poetics of transformation and becoming \u2014 thus anticipating a theme that will be central to the museum\u2019s 2026 exhibition program: metamorphosis.<\/p>\n
Black Soil Poems<\/i>\u00a0invites us to transcend fixed perspectives, shifting our gaze to allow the coexistence of multiple narratives and revealing\u00a0the museum not only as a space of memory, but as a site of imagination and transformation<\/b>. Wangechi Mutu\u2019s interventions urge viewers to inhabit the museum differently \u2014 to look not only at what is on display, but also at what has been removed, silenced, or rendered invisible.<\/p>\n
Outdoors, on the museum\u2019s fa\u00e7ade and in the Secret Gardens, a series of bronze sculptures populate the landscape:\u00a0The Seated I<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0The Seated IV<\/i>\u00a0\u2014 two contemporary caryatids originally created for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2019 as part of\u00a0The Facade Commission\u00a0<\/i>\u2014 mark a significant moment of engagement between the artist and a major public institution. Also present are\u00a0Nyoka<\/i>,\u00a0Heads in a Basket<\/i>,\u00a0Musa<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Water Woman<\/i>\u00a0bronzes that reinterpret archetypal vessels as sites of transformation. With\u00a0The End of eating Everything<\/i>, Mutu expands her sculptural language into video, adding a temporal and immersive dimension to her ongoing exploration of myth. These works introduce\u00a0new hybrid forms, part human, part mythological, part symbolic vessel<\/b>, drawing on the traditions of East Africa and global cosmologies, as if emerging from a symbolic ground. In their quiet occupation of the gardens and architectural thresholds, they offer a\u00a0counterbalance to the site\u2019s classical order, challenging idealized form and linear narrative in favor of ambiguity, otherness, and spiritual presence.<\/b>\u00a0Sound, whether audible or implied, and its trace play a subtle but pervasive role in the exhibition: from the suspended rhythm of\u00a0Poems by my great Grandmother I<\/i>, to the lyrics resting in\u00a0Grains of Words<\/i>, drawn from Bob Marley\u2019s song WAR, references Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia (1930\u20131974) and a key figure in anti-colonial movements, whose 1963 speech at the United Nations called for an end to racial injustice. Language becomes sculptural, and sound becomes a form of memory.<\/p>\n
The exhibition continues at the\u00a0American Academy in Rome<\/b>, where\u00a0Shavasana I<\/i>\u00a0is on view. This bronze figure, lying down and covered by a woven straw mat, takes its name from the yoga pose \u201cshavasana\u201d (corpse pose) and is inspired by a real-life incident. Its placement in the Academy\u2019s atrium, surrounded by ancient Roman funerary inscriptions, amplifies themes of death, surrender, and the dignity of life.<\/p>\n
With this exhibition, Galleria Borghese continues its commitment to contemporary art, following recent exhibitions such as\u00a0Giuseppe Penone Universal Gestures<\/i>\u00a0(2023) and\u00a0Louise Bourgeois<\/i>\u00a0Unconscious Memories\u00a0<\/i>(2024), fostering renewed way of seeing space, enriched with new connections and perspectives through the vision of a major international artist.<\/p>\n
The exhibition is made possible thanks to the\u00a0support of\u00a0FENDI<\/b>,\u00a0official sponsor of the show<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From June 10 to September 14, 2025,\u00a0Galleria Borghese presents, for the first time within the residence of Cardinal Scipione, a solo exhibition by Kenyan-American artist\u00a0Wangechi Mutu, titled\u00a0Black Soil Poems, curated by Clo\u00e9 Perrone. Like the recently concluded exhibition dedicated to the Baroque poet Giovan Battista Marino, this project also stems from the museum\u2019s ongoing interest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":16588,"menu_order":5,"template":"","categories":[14],"class_list":["post-16192","exhibition","type-exhibition","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-passate"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n