Wangechi Mutu

Mutu's figures fuse women, animals, plants and spirits into beings that feel both ancient and science fiction. Born in Nairobi in 1972 and working between New York and Nairobi, she carries that strangeness from collage into bronze, as in the four seated figures she made in 2019 for the long-empty niches of the Met's Fifth Avenue facade. At this year's Venice Biennale, In Minor Keys, which closes on November 22, 2026, she shows The End, Where All began, EdEN, an installation re-imagining the Garden of Eden, plus SimbiSiren, a five-meter bronze water spirit by the Arsenale harbor. Next comes London: as the National Gallery's Contemporary Fellow, she has an exhibition there from October 9, 2027.