From the Black Earth: Roots of the world according to Wangechi Mutu
By Maria Milvia Morciano
Since June 10, the Borghese Gallery in Rome—renowned for its marble and timeless masterpieces—has opened its doors to Wangechi Mutu’s visual exploration. Black Soil Poems invites visitors to confront the shared origins of humanity, guided by the imaginative power of contemporary art. A presence in deep dialogue with the space, the exhibition reveals new ways of interpreting history.
A multiform artist
Born in Nairobi and educated between Kenya and the United States, Wangechi Mutu is a multidisciplinary artist working in painting, sculpture, collage, installations, and video. Her work focuses on universal messages that transcend cultural and contextual boundaries. As curator Cloé Perrone observes, “Mutu doesn’t divide, she unifies”—pointing to the deeper direction of her practice: to seek in art what brings us together, rather than what separates us.
“The exhibition is an act of reconnection, not an archive of differences. It’s a journey that aims to anchor different cultures and historical moments to the same earth we all come from,” Perrone emphasizes.
Behind the title and project
The metaphor of “black earth” evokes fertility, memory, and roots—it’s the common ground from which cultures and myths sprout. Earth—dark, clay-like—is a recurring material in Mutu’s works and holds the same dignity as bronze or other precious materials.
In this sense, Mutu’s work evokes an original time. Art is not decoration or mere representation—it is humanity’s first language, predating writing: a system of signs and symbols that united communities long before words, and that still allows us to recognize our shared roots beyond cultural boundaries.
Within the museum: Suspension and void
At the Borghese Gallery, Mutu predominantly uses sculpture, but removes it from pedestals and monumentality. Her works hang from ceilings or rest on low horizontal planes or directly on the ground—subtle presences that inhabit the “cracks” of the space. They seem like spirits or memories in transit, coexisting with the weight of history, floating around us.
Bronze, feathers, wood, pigments—each material carries with it a sense of time and memory. Mutu’s art moves between the archaic and the futuristic, between ritual gesture and visionary imagination. Her language finds its most authentic expression in transformation—a theme that will be central to the museum’s programming in 2026. Bronze, in particular, recalls an ancestral heritage that Mutu reinterprets with contemporary force.
Art as concrete poetry
On the façade of Villa Borghese, The Seated I and The Seated IV appear as solemn caryatids—heirs to both classical and Egyptian statuary as well as African traditions. Inside the gallery, each piece reveals its own story.
One site-specific installation, Grains of Words, is a large expanse of tissue paper on which the lyrics of War—Bob Marley’s iconic song, drawn from a 1963 United Nations speech by Haile Selassie calling for racial justice—are inscribed using tea and coffee. It’s a powerful message: these everyday beverages, symbols of pleasure today, were once drivers of colonialism and oppression.
“The piece,” notes Perrone, “also draws from concrete poetry. It’s the idea that words can be planted—and when planted in this earth, they will grow into something greater.”
Secret Gardens: Guardians and hybrid creatures
The exhibition extends beyond the gallery halls, transforming the villa’s exterior spaces as well. In the Secret Gardens, hybrid creatures—large baskets, aquatic female figures, sleeping serpents—expand Mutu’s symbolic universe. Meanwhile, the video The End of eating Everything, projected on the terrace, offers a commentary on ecology and modern society’s obsession with consumption.
Beyond the Museum grounds
The exhibition continues at the American Academy in Rome, on the Janiculum Hill, where Shavasana I is on display—a sculpture of a female figure lying down, wrapped in a woven straw mat. The yoga pose “shavasana”, known as the “corpse pose,” here becomes a symbol of vulnerability and silence. The work’s placement in the Academy’s atrium, among Roman funerary inscriptions, creates a powerful dialogue between past and present, inviting contemplation on the fragility and dignity of human life.
A shared curatorial process
Having an exhibit at the Borghese Gallery is no easy task—contemporary works must navigate both conservation requirements and the commanding presence of the historical collection. The exhibition design, as Perrone explains, was the result of a collaborative process and ongoing revisions.
“Mutu analyzes myths, reinterprets and rewrites them from a perspective that differs from the European one, seeking common origins.” The outcome is a dialogue that doesn’t pit the ancient against the contemporary, but allows them to resonate together, forming new and unexpected relationships.
The Museum as a living organism
The Borghese Gallery reaffirms itself not only as a guardian of the past but as a living space where the present engages with history. Following the exhibitions Universal Gestures by Giuseppe Penone (2023) and The Unconscious of Memory by Louise Bourgeois (2024), the gallery continues to offer new ways of seeing space—renewed by connections and perspectives.
“To look more intensely,” said director Francesca Cappelletti, “means embracing the challenge of interpreting change and transformation.” For example, she adds, “by raising or lowering your gaze, you encounter Mutu’s sculptures and installations—not obstructing the view of the permanent collection, but enriching the visitor’s experience, inviting a new relationship with the site’s history.”
On display until September 14, Mutu invites visitors to journey through these spaces from a fresh perspective—recognizing Africa as the root of all cultures, and art as the original language that, even before writing, gave form to the shared experience of humanity.
Thank you for reading our article. You can keep up-to-date by subscribing to our daily newsletter. Just click here
