As a carnivorous insect, praying mantises camouflage themselves to match their environment, snaring their prey with their enormous legs. During mating, the female can become a sexual cannibal—eating her submissive mate. Such imagery and its association with natural phenomena creates a primal sensibility. Despite this reference to a real praying mantis, Mutu’s “preying mantra” is also vulnerable to our gaze, suggesting that the figure may be a victim that is “preyed” upon by “mantras.” Mutu creates a natural, even primitive, fictional environment that entices and disturbs us even as she invites us to explore stereotypes about the African female body as explicitly sexual, dangerous, and aesthetically deformed in relation to Western standards. Given that elements of the collage are assembled from sociocultural documents found in popular literature from the West, the figure may be preying on the viewer’s own fears and desires. (Harris)