Wangechi Mutu’s Debut Rome Exhibition At Galleria Borghese

Lee Sharrock | Forbes | 30th June 2025

Mutu’s star seems ever ascendant, becoming the first living female artist to have a solo show at Rome’s Galleria Borghese. Amidst the villa’s opulence and spectacular art, Mutu’s work is a “counterpoint”. Some of her materials are humble – wax, wood and soil – things usually absent from art history’s grand narratives. Bronze, such a heroic material, is “reimagined as porous and ancestral”. In various ways, she asks, “who is seen … who is erased?” Mutu’s work, says the writer, is “elegant yet subversive”.