Preying Mantra
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When I can’t decode a piece like this, Smarthistory always helps me out. While having and maintaining my own impressions of a work are important, the background helps put a lot of pieces together for me. I am not familiar with Wangechi Mutu, so this article provided so much information on the piece and Mutu. Preying Mantra is a 2006 multimedia creation. The article suggests that the female-insect imagery has multiple meanings in this excerpt:
Mutu’s various meanings allow for a lot of interpretations of the piece. I love how she was able to tie in so many themes, including nature and perceptions of women based on race. Most of all, I think this piece demonstrates the capacity of women. Vulnerability can coexist with, and even appear the same as, power and sexual ownership.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)
Here is a look insider Mutu’s Studio: